Exodus of American stars puts Canada’s hockey credentials to the test

His Honour is not amused.

Judge Thomas Chandler Haliburton’s official portrait sits high on the wall of the Clifton Museum in this small East Coast community that calls itself the ‘Birthplace of Hockey.’

The judge is not smiling. He looks, well … perturbed … which is about as accurate an assessment as possible of NHL hockey as the league enters its 110th season – 109th of actual play, if you exclude the 2004-05 lockout.

The preseason is already under way, the first official games scheduled for Tuesday evening when five regular-season matches will be played, including the Vancouver Canucks at the Edmonton Oilers and the Montreal Canadiens visiting the Toronto Maple Leafs (and the league’s No. 1 draft pick, Gavin McKenna).

Another 1,339 games later, and the 2027 playoffs will begin. Will there finally be a Canadian Stanley Cup champion?

What to know about the 2026-27 season before the puck drops Tuesday

At the moment, however, the hockey world is not thinking so far ahead. Not thinking at all, some might say. It is now 182 years since Judge Haliburton wrote in the local King’s College School publication about boys “let out racin’, yelpin’, hollerin’, and whoopin’ like mad with pleasure” as they ran out onto nearby Long Pond with their skates, hurley sticks and a small object to bat about. The world’s first game of hockey, many believe, though others say the puck was first dropped in the Far North or the frozen canals of Europe.

So far, the 2026-27 NHL season has been almost exclusively about “hollerin’” – bursts of anger that cover everything from traded players and new coaches to, unbelievably, Vladimir Putin and, of course, Donald Trump.

There has been a panic in the Canadian autumn air that American-born players have had enough of the very foundation of the game: winter ice.

Ottawa Senators team captain Brady Tkachuk was able to force a trade to the Florida Panthers, where he will play with his brother, Matthew, and be cheered on by his father, Keith, a retired American player who will enter the Hockey Hall of Fame in November.

Once beloved in Canada’s capital, the younger Tkachuk has been widely pilloried by a fan base that has been praying for its first Stanley Cup in 100 years.

New Senators owner Michael Andlauer tossed a match into a grease pot when he said of Brady: “Blood is thicker than water, and let’s just say that his father and his brother got in his kitchen.”

No matter what the reason, the Tkachuk departure from Canada seemed a trend to some. Superstar defenceman Quinn Hughes, born in Florida, managed a trade from the Canadian team he captained, the Vancouver Canucks, to the Minnesota Wild. And Connor Hellebuyck, the Michigan-born goaltender who had been the Winnipeg Jets’ great hope for a Stanley Cup run, demanded a trade to a non-Canadian market – a request that so outraged some fans that the three-time Vezina Trophy winner was forced to hire security. He has been suspended by the Jets.

As The Globe’s Cathal Kelly wrote here earlier this week, “… every Canadian hockey fan should feel the chill of this. First, Winnipeg. Next, your team.”

Hellebuyck, it must be noted, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Trump following the American gold-medal victory over Canada in the Milan Winter Olympics. Tkachuk and Hughes also played for Team USA, Hughes even scoring the overtime goal that sent his team into the semi-finals.

Trump is not the only world leader caught up in this fall’s hockey previews. The game’s all-time leading goal scorer, Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals, appeared recently in a television ad showing his public support for Putin, the Russian president. Offended fans have called for Ovechkin to be cast from the league and even denied his rightful future place alongside the senior Tkachuk in the Hall of Fame.

Marcus Kolga and Dominik Hasek: Ovechkin used his fame to back Putin. We must remember that

But this is about Canada, not Moscow or Washington.

The last Canadian team to reach the Stanley Cup final was the Edmonton Oilers, who lost in 2024 and 2025 to Matthew Tkachuk’s Florida Panthers. The last Canadian team to win the Cup was the Montreal Canadiens in 1993, back when Kim Campbell was prime minister.

The one-time-dynasty Oilers last won in 1990, the year Nelson Mandela was freed. The Calgary Flames won in 1989, when the World Wide Web was first proposed. The Toronto Maple Leafs won their last Cup in 1967, the year of the first heart transplant – no jokes allowed.

With the two top players in the game in their prime – Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl – it might be expected that the Oilers would still be Canada’s best bet at winning the first Stanley Cup since 1993.

Yet all is far from happy in Oilers Land.

The Oilers recently signed Alex Formenton to a one-year contract, creating a storm of backlash over the fact that, last year, the young player was acquitted, along with four other junior players, of sexual-assault charges following an encounter with a young woman at a 2018 Hockey Canada celebration in London, Ont.

The court of public opinion has not proved so lenient. In one fan’s open letter to the Oilers, it was argued: “Playing in the NHL is not a right. It is a privilege, and the Oilers chose to extend that privilege despite the league itself describing the events as ‘deeply troubling and unacceptable’ and falling short of its standards of moral integrity.”

The Oilers have not only a new player, despite the outcry, but also a new coach in Mike Babcock, who last left the league following an outcry that, among other controversial matters, the-then coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets was forcing players to let him check their cellphones.

“I’m absolutely shocked that they hired him,” commented Mark Messier, who stands with Wayne Gretzky as one of the twin gods of past Oilers successes.

“Maybe the game has changed,” said the six-time Stanley Cup winner.

Yes, the game has indeed changed.

How sweet it would be to stop all the “hollerin’” and get back to some “whoopin’.”