Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

The Future Looks Bright For The Canadian NHL Teams And Steven Stamkos Will Miss It All

10/26/2016 at 7:31am EDT

from Damien Cox of the Toronto Star,

So the reality is, folks, that by 2020 there are going to be exciting and probably formidable teams in Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg, and possibly Toronto as well. Individually, you could have legitimate superstars in Price, McDavid, Gaudreau, Laine and Matthews. Maybe Puljujarvi, Bennett, Scheifele and Marner as well. That will surely help Rogers and its $5.2-billion investment, and create a wave of interest in Canadian teams unseen since the late 1980s and early 1990s.

My radio pal Bob McCown disagrees, but my belief is that if and when the Leafs rise to where Brendan Shanahan believes they will rise, the excitement created over the past 18 months by the Blue Jays will seem moderate by comparison. We’ll see, and this being the Leafs, of course, it may never happen.

So that’s what Stamkos will miss. Being a part of all that in his prime. The fact that all seven Canadian teams missed the playoffs last season made it easier last summer to glance at the hockey landscape in the Great White North and see desolation, defeat and pressure without reward. By contrast, the Lightning are an excellent franchise poised to win now, and the sunshine of Florida feels that much more comfortable than Canada in January.

But in a few years, that contrast will seem less vivid, and Canada will be where the NHL action will be. Folks and media in various U.S. hockey cities will sneer at what they will perceive to be an undeserved sense of shinny superiority up north, particularly in Toronto, and that’s okay. They’re probably right. We haven’t had a Cup winner since ’93, after all.

more including more on Stamkos...

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Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

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