from Michael Traikos of the National Post,

“When he was going through his little slump,” said Ducks head coach Bruce Boudreau, “I’m sure he was a lot happier that he could walk in Newport and have nobody say anything than be in downtown Toronto.”

“That’s a luxury we have out there,” said Getzlaf. “When you do go through tough patches like that, personally and as a team, you don’t deal with as much riding on your shoulders and with people beating you down or pressuring you to do different things.”

In other words, there’s a reason why Steven Stamkos could end up choosing Tampa Bay rather than Toronto if he enters free agency this summer. And if he does, he would not be alone.

According to agents and general managers, Canadian teams appear a lot more often than American teams on players’ no-trade lists. And when it comes to free agency, Canadian teams either lose out on the big fish or have to overpay.

The pressure on players in Canada is a well-worn excuse. It’s a cop-out that masks other factors — god-awful goaltending, mismanagement of the salary cap, an inability to draft and develop — that could help explain why no Canadian teams are in the playoffs this year and why it has been 23 years since the Stanley Cup did not need a passport to hold a championship parade.

But players, coaches, general managers and agents insist there’s some truth there.

“I have never had a player that hasn’t put the large majority of the teams on their no-trade list from Canada,” said player agent Ritch Winter, whose clients include Marian Hossa, Cody Hodgson and Ilya Bryzgalov. “The issue is that certain players — and there’s a growing number of them — like their privacy. I tell this to general managers all the time: you have to be better in Canada to be successful, because they have to have another reason to attract players.”

“Every guy handles it differently, but it’s definitely easier when you have no media,” said Leafs forward Milan Michalek, who spent previous years playing in Ottawa and San Jose. “In San Jose, you get out of the rink and forget everything. You’ve got the sun and you just throw on some shorts and go by the pool or the ocean. It’s nice. It’s almost no media at all.”

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