Anti-Russian sentiment is not helping your team win the Stanley Cup

This is an updated version of last year’s “The Ultimate Hockey Breakaway – from Russia to the NHL Sunbelt”.

When the National Hockey Association (NHA) was originally formed in 1893, the word National referred to Canada – not the United States. As a matter of fact, for the first 24 years of the Canadian hockey league, it had no USA team at all. In 1917, it was re-named the National Hockey League (NHL).

But now – for the first time ever – Canadian teams have gone 32 years without winning the Lord Stanley’s coveted Cup. For the first 100 years of the NHL – from 1893-1993 – NHL Canadian teams had never gone more than six years without winning the Stanley Cup – Montreal never more than nine years. So why have both now gone 32 years without winning it?

After the chaotic breakup of the Soviet Union during the tumultuous 1990s, a tsunami of Russian money came flooding into South Florida, including hundreds of Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs buying up luxury condos on the Southeast coast of Florida – many of which were sold by owner Donald Trump. By the way, there was nothing illegal about these sales.

In the South Florida resort town of Sunny Isles Beach, an area with the highest number of Russian-born residents in the U.S., the Donald Trump brand has six residential towers. Since their massive cash flow goes directly into his bank account, he has a vested interest to be biased in favor of his Russians clients.

Skating atop this westward wave of incoming Russian wealth included an influx of highly marketable star Russian hockey players – in a breakaway to score lucrative player contracts in the National Hockey League (NHL). This would quickly tip the balance of power in the league to those teams most willing to accept these talented players that the Cold War climate had for the previous seven decades iced out from playing in the NHL – despite their world-class talent.

This new wave of Russian players tended to populate NHL expansion team rosters such as the two in South Florida – the Tampa Bay Lightning – an expansion franchise in the 1992–93 season – and the Miami-based Florida Panthers the following season – in addition to the wave of new NHL teams sweeping across many other Southern “Sun Belt” cities of the United States, who were willing to add star Russian (in addition to other Eastern European countries) hockey players to their burgeoning squads.

Meanwhile, Canadian teams – with their substantial national pride – especially in the sport of hockey – their unofficial national sport – always saw Russian players as only the competition – not their teammates. By the way, Canada’s official national sport is the Native American sport of lacrosse, although it is not nearly as popular as hockey in the “Great White North”.

After Russia officially renounced communism in 1991, it opened the floodgates and enabled NHL teams to sign many of the star Russian players not to mention players from other former Soviet-bloc countries such as Czechoslovakia.

This “new wave” of Eastern European players commenced a new era in the NHL, which coincided with a wave of expansion teams, most of which were located in the “Sun Belt” of the USA – and a slew of Stanley Cups would follow them there ever since. This could not have happened before the 1990s.

These teams included Tampa Bay, who won three Stanley Cups (2004, 2020, 2021), the Carolina Hurricanes – who won a Stanley Cup in 2006 after relocating from the dismal Hartford Whalers in 1997 –, the Anaheim Ducks (2007), Las Vegas Golden Knights (2023), and also the Dallas Stars – who had also never won a Stanley Cup while playing as the North Stars in Minnesota, then won the coveted Cup in 1999 soon after relocating to the “Sun Belt” in 1993. All of these teams enhanced their squads with Russian players – something Canadian teams were reluctant to do. For 106 years, no NHL team south of Philadelphia had ever won the Stanley Cup until the Dallas Stars did in 1999. So the Canadian teams did not really get any worse – the other teams just got better than they were.

Another mediocre NHL franchise, the Quebec Nordiques, were moved to Denver in 1995, and renamed the Colorado Avalanche. Although not exactly a “Sun Belt” city, they became a marquis team after their southward relocation, winning three Stanley Cups in 1996, 2001, and 2022.

The Pittsburgh Penguins, who were so pitiful during the 1980s that the owner was on the verge of moving the franchise, were saved in the early 1990s not only by the drafting of Canadian superstar “Super Mario” Lemieux, but also by the addition of Eastern-bloc star players such as Jaromír Jágr, from Czechia (renamed from the former Czechoslovakia). This took the Penguins “from the outhouse to the penthouse”, suddenly winning two Stanley Cups in 1991 and 1992.

In the following decade, the Penguins had another resurgence led by Canadian superstar Sidney Crosby and Russian superstar Evgeni Malkin, which resulted in three more Stanley Cups in 2009, 2016, and 2017 – making a staggering five Stanley Cups from 1991-2017 – leaving Canadian teams far behind.

Other teams existing before the 1990s did not win Stanley Cups until after taking on star players from ex Soviet-bloc countries in the 1990s such as the Los Angeles Kings (2012, 2014), and the Washington Capitals (2018) led by Russian superstar Alexander Ovechkin, regarded as the best player in the NHL at the time.

In the last two years, it has now become the Florida Panthers’ turn, who won their first Stanley Cup in 2024, who could not have done it without key star players of Russian ancestry, which includes superstar goalie Sergei “The Bob” Bobrovsky, Aleksander Barkov, and Vladimir Tarasenko. The Panthers are now on the cusp of making it two Cups in a row, if they can finish off the Edmonton Oilers for the second consecutive year. Florida had already shown a good degree of success by previously getting to the Cup finals in 1996 and 2023 – albeit in a losing cause.