The National Post's Bruce Arthur presents a unique take on the fact that the Montreal Canadiens will be the only Canadian team to make the playoffs this season, going against the, "Canadians must always root for whichever teams make the playoffs, even if they don't like said teams!" current:
If it’s one team this season, then that makes 25 times in 57 combined seasons that Canadian teams have made the playoffs since the 2004-05 lockout. That’s 2.8 teams per year, including Winnipeg’s new three-year Canadian drought. But it’s hard for just one Canadian team to reach the post-season, even with Toronto and Edmonton both acting almost as blank squares on the bingo card, year after year. (They’ve only gotten there once apiece since that lockout, and both ended in rather painful Game 7s.)
So you know what this means, right? It means the charade that we enjoy every year as the teams fall away, leaving one Canadian team alive: Some will urge Canada to band together and root for whoever is left, because as this winter has shown for the majority of the country, we are all in this thing together. My esteemed colleague Cam Cole has already given this bell a faint ring, though to his credit he stopped there. But let’s stop this before it starts.
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