Dan Hamilton-Imagn Images
On Jan. 18, the 25th edition of Hockey Day in Canada will take place in Camrose, Alta. If everything goes right over the next week, all seven Canadian teams participating might be in a playoff spot when they step into the spotlight next Saturday.
This is a noteworthy trend. We haven’t seen seven Canadian teams reach the playoffs since 1985-86. Right now, the nation’s Stanley Cup hopes are as bright as they’ve been in a long time.
The Winnipeg Jets, Toronto Maple Leafs, Winnipeg Jets and Edmonton Oilers are currently among the league’s top teams. As of Jan. 11, The Athletic has them slotted within the top seven Cup contenders, with the Oilers sitting comfortably in first place.
Come playoff time, the Oilers will be looking to build off what they learned during their run to the Stanley Cup final last season. Toronto also looks battle-ready under Craig Berube, with stouter defense and stronger goaltending. And if goaltending wins championships, Winnipeg will be front and center thanks to another sterling season from Connor Hellebuyck.
But don’t look past the rest of the field. After Saturday night’s games, the Vancouver Canucks were hanging on to the second wild-card spot in the West while the Calgary Flames were just one point back. In the East, the Montreal Canadiens are two points out of the wild card, and the Ottawa Senators are three back — and both have better points percentages than the Boston Bruins, in the first wild-card spot.
In the past, we’ve seen the St. Louis Blues race all the way up the standings to a Stanley Cup in the second half, and the Los Angeles Kings win it all as an eighth seed. Anything’s possible.
The Scene In ’86
The last time seven Canadian teams made the playoffs, the 21-team NHL included the Quebec Nordiques and the original Jets, and the Ottawa Senators were six years away from returning to the nation’s capital.
In the Western Conference, the four Canadian squads were matched up against each other in the first round. Edmonton and Calgary swept Vancouver and Winnipeg respectively, each in best-of-five series. Then, the Flames upset the two-time defending champion Oilers in Game 7 of Round 2 off Steve Smith’s infamous own-goal. They went on to the final.
In the East, the Nordiques got swept by the Hartford Whalers while Montreal and Toronto swept Boston and Chicago, respectively. The Leafs got knocked out by the St. Louis Blues in a seven-game second-round series. The Canadiens emerged triumphant, beating Hartford and the Rangers before taking out Calgary in five games for their 23rd Stanley Cup in franchise history — with a 21-year-old rookie goalie named Patrick Roy winning the Conn Smythe Trophy.
That was before Wayne Gretzky’s 1988 trade to the Los Angeles Kings. It was before the NHL’s sun-belt expansion began in the early 90s. And it was decades before hockey conversations included detailed breakdowns of tax situations in different jurisdictions and debates about whether Canada’s high tax rates have put the teams north of the 49th parallel at a disadvantage.
Taxing Matters
Mark Feigenbaum, a partner with KPMG, is a cross-border tax expert. For The Hockey News’ 2025 ‘Money and Power’ issue, he crunched the numbers to see how tax rates compare across all 32 markets.
Based on Feigenbaum’s assumptions, which level the playing field as much as possible across the jurisdictions, the four most highly taxed markets are all Canadian: Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver. And yes, the last five Cups have been won by lower-tax teams — the Florida Panthers, Vegas Golden Knights, Colorado Avalanche and Tampa Bay Lightning (twice).
Related: Hockey & Taxes: What An NHL Player Pays In Taxes Depending On Their Team
But that’s not enough to explain why Canada’s drought stretches all the way back to 1993. Alberta’s lower provincial taxes place the Oilers and Flames in the middle of the list, just above the 2011 champions from Boston. And even Winnipeg’s tax rate is lower than the California teams, which include the 2007 champion Anaheim Ducks and the two-time champion Los Angeles Kings.
Puck Luck
Even though no Canadian team has finished the job in 31 years and counting, they’ve had their chances. The Oilers came within a goal of besting the Panthers just last spring and also reached Game 7 of the final in 2006. So did the Canucks in 2011 and 1994 and the Flames in 2004.
The Senators also reached the 2007 Stanley Cup final, and Montreal made its surprise appearance in 2021.
That leaves just two franchises out of the mix. The Leafs’ last appearance in the final was their win over the Canadiens to wrap up the Original Six era in 1967. And while the original Winnipeg Jets won three Avco Cups during their seven years in the World Hockey Association, they’ve never made the Stanley Cup final in either of their NHL incarnations.
Sweet Six
Even if only six Canadian playoff teams crack the top 16 this year, that would still be a rarity. The last time that happened was in 1993, when Montreal bested Wayne Gretzky’s Los Angeles Kings.
In 2020, six of seven Canadian clubs qualified for the 24-team summer playoff bubble — all but Ottawa, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Toronto made it past the best-of-five preliminary round, leaving only Vancouver, Montreal and Calgary in the official 16-team bracket.
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