Edmonton Oilers superstar Connor McDavid is still waiting for his first Stanley Cup, and the NHL’s seven Canadian franchises are still waiting for their championship drought to end.
With the Oilers’ 5-1 loss to the Florida Panthers on Tuesday night, it continued Canada’s staggering Stanley Cup drought and extended it to 32 consecutive years.
You have to go all the way back to the 1992-93 NHL season to find the last time one of the NHL’s Canadian-based franchise won the Cup. It was during that season that the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Los Angeles Kings to win their 25th championship. Since then, all of them have been shut out.
The drought is so extensive that an American-based team won the Canadian Football League championship (the Baltimore Stallions in 1995) more recently than a Canadian NHL team has won the Stanley Cup. It is worth noting that the CFL left the United States and returned to being a Canadian-only league in 1996.
Since Montreal’s win in 1993, Canadian teams have made eight appearances in the Stanley Cup Final and lost all of them.
- The Vancouver Canucks lost the 1994 (New York Rangers) and 2011 (Boston Bruins) Stanley Cup Final
- The Calgary Flames lost the 2003 series (Tampa Bay Lightning)
- The Ottawa Senators lost the 2006 series (Anaheim Ducks)
- The Canadiens lost the 2021 series (Tampa Bay Lightning)
- The Oilers have made the most Stanley Cup Final appearances among the league’s Canadian teams during the drought, losing the 2006 (Carolina Hurricanes), 2024 and 2025 (Florida Panthers) series.
- The Toronto Maple Leafs and Winnipeg Jets are the only two Canadian franchises to have not appeared in a Stanley Cup Final since the 1993 season.
As long as McDavid and Leon Draisaitl are in Edmonton, the Oilers figure to be the team closest to snapping that drought and bringing the Cup back to Canada, but it’s going to be awfully difficult to make a third consecutive Stanley Cup Final next season.
