Canada's NHL fortunes are rising, and North Division fans are in for a treat

Phil Pritchard, the white-gloved guardian of the Stanley Cup, wasn't at the Montreal Forum in June 1993 to witness that rarest of recent NHL sights: a Canadian team raising the silver chalice overhead.

Pritchard was on the job at the time, but in Los Angeles, waiting to see if that season's Canadiens-Kings title series would extend past a fifth game. It didn't - Wayne Gretzky was no match for Patrick Roy - and Pritchard flew to Quebec to facilitate the Habs' championship summer shortly thereafter. He ushered the Cup to some of the players' hometowns in neighboring Ontario and Vermont, and team and trophy toured La Belle Province, basking in the kind of rave reception from grateful fans that no northerly franchise has enjoyed for the past 28 years.

Packed arenas and parades remain nonstarters this early in 2021 with the pandemic continuing to rage. In the NHL, border closures forced the creation of an all-Canada division. Though none of its seven clubs enter the season as a title favorite, one will compete in the Stanley Cup semifinals this spring because of the realignment.

That guarantee is a powerful, seductive thing. Losses in four championship Game 7s have prolonged the Canadian Cup drought this long, but this winter and spring, much of the populace has reason to crave - expect, even - the rush of a deep playoff run.

"Whether it's been Montreal winning in '93 or the Canucks losing twice or the Flames or the Oilers, you really see the passion of the Canadian fans and how they're all-in," Pritchard said.

In 2021, the NHL's realigned North Division is set to salute and celebrate that national mania. It also promises to produce riveting TV. The Canucks, Flames, Oilers, Jets, Maple Leafs, Senators, and Canadiens: Think of this group as the consummate blend of setting, character, and plot, wherein tribal lines are drawn, ill will is stoked, and a loaded cast of players are pitted against each other for 56 games.

Star power abounds in the North, as do juicy storylines. Leon Draisaitl, Connor McDavid, and Auston Matthews should vie for MVP consideration and the points or goals titles. Stellar youngsters shine in every time zone: Quinn Hughes, McDavid, Patrik Laine (barring a trade out of Winnipeg), and Mitch Marner. Incumbent older All-Stars Carey Price and Shea Weber will clash with greybeards new to the mix, like Matthews' 41-year-old linemate Joe Thornton. The division features both Tkachuk brothers, Calgary's Matthew and Ottawa's Brady, whose teams are scheduled to meet nine times in as many weeks.

If it feels fitting that Canada's clubs are clustered this season, maybe that has to do with the collective status gains they've experienced since 2016, when none qualified for the playoffs.

"All the teams are moving north in the last couple years," Sportsnet NHL analyst Brian Burke, the retired longtime general manager, told theScore last week, summoning an apt metaphor.

That includes bottom-feeding Ottawa, where hope is the guiding light in an ongoing rebuild and cornerstone up-and-comers - Tkachuk, Thomas Chabot, and Tim Stueztle - are gearing up to face stiff competition nightly.

"You can look at it where you want to play teams that are in the same scenario as you, to see where your young guys are," Senators head coach D.J. Smith said during training camp last week. "Or you can trial-by-fire and go against the best in the world. Auston Matthews, John Tavares, Mitch Marner one night. (Elias) Pettersson, (J.T.) Miller, (Bo) Horvat, (Brock) Boeser the next night. (Mark) Scheifele and (Blake) Wheeler and all these guys the next night. Then you go into Montreal, who has maybe, arguably, the best defense.

"You're going to have to find ways to score. You're going to have to find ways to play. And, ultimately, it's going to make us a better team."

Around the division, everyone else's postseason ambitions are legit. With the Boston Bruins and reigning champion Tampa Bay Lightning grouped south of the border, Toronto's chance to reach the Stanley Cup semis seems prime, but maybe it isn't. When theScore's John Matisz tiered the NHL's 31 teams in November, by which time rosters were mostly set, he rated Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, and Vancouver as "moderately dangerous" - from 11th to 17th in the league, effectively - and Winnipeg a cut below as a playoff team if all breaks right.

Intriguing questions that'll shape the playoff chase are in rich supply. How will the offseason's big goaltending acquisitions - Jacob Markstrom to the Flames, Braden Holtby to the Canucks, Matt Murray to the Sens - fare in new homes? How about Edmonton's Tyson Barrie, Vancouver's Nate Schmidt, and Montreal's many veteran additions? How will Hughes and Pettersson continue to grow? How will the Leafs handle the pressure of pursuing, yet again, their first series victory of the Matthews era? (Perhaps by taking cues from the easygoing Thornton: "I got no stress, man, honestly," he told reporters last week.)

The quirks of the 2021 schedule - limiting each team's opposition to a quarter of the NHL and loading up on two- or three-game series, a la Major League Baseball - were designed to reduce travel amid the pandemic. For those divisions whose members are inclined to hate each other, that inbuilt familiarity is bound to breed added contempt.

"We play Montreal, like, five or six times in the first dozen games," the Canucks' Miller noted last week. (It's five times in Vancouver's first 13 matchups, but point made.)

Meanwhile, the Jets face Calgary on Thursday and again four times from Feb. 1 to 9, a lot of Matthew Tkachuk to see at once.

"It suits my style more this year," said Tkachuk, one of hockey's premier super-pests. "I think one of my gifts is it doesn't take me very much to get up for games. Coming into an all-Canadian division, it's going to be a rivalry night every night. Lots of eyes on us in this country."

By increasing the meetings between teams that would usually face off just twice a year, 2021 will magnify certain stylistic contrasts. Those early Canucks-Habs games match Vancouver's young guns against Montreal's rugged defense, led by Weber, Jeff Petry, Ben Chiarot, and Joel Edmundson. In last season's Central Division, said Jets coach Paul Maurice, Winnipeg played a bunch of "heavy games" against the likes of the Dallas Stars, St. Louis Blues, and Nashville Predators. Now the Jets have 10 dates - 18% of their season - with run-and-gun Toronto, including nine in March and April alone.

"What's interesting to me is what style (will be) left," Maurice said. "When the season comes to an end, what's the most predominant?"

Before 2021, no realignment in the NHL's long history left Canada with a division to truly call its own. Even the pre-Original Six Canadian Division, which housed Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa teams from 1926 to 1938, included the New York Americans as a member club, plus the ill-fated St. Louis Eagles for a single season.

This year's unicorn format guarantees Canada four playoff spots, almost assuring some long-awaited matchup will be staged in May. Battle of Alberta games are bitter in the regular season, but Calgary and Edmonton haven't met in the postseason since 1991. Calgary and Montreal have yet to reprise the 1989 Stanley Cup Final. Montreal last played Edmonton in 1981 and Vancouver in 1975. Toronto's most recent encounters with the Habs and Flames came in 1979, and no Leafs team has squared off with either Winnipeg or Edmonton.

The hypotheticals are alluring, though Burke ventured that 80% of the country would join him in wanting to see an Oilers-Flames series most of all. No matter who makes the playoffs, the journey there figures to be special for Canadian players, those who can envision what it would have meant to them to tune into this division as kids. Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse, who was raised in Hamilton, Ontario, said last week he's excited to bank a lot of games against his friends' favorite childhood squads, an extra motivational jolt.

"I think some of them still root for those teams," Nurse said.

"For me, it was the Battle of Alberta that I always watched," said Brendan Gallagher, the veteran Canadiens forward who grew up in Edmonton. "The intensity that came with that game. Obviously, being part of the Montreal-Toronto rivalry now for nine years, I understand the history of that. There's just so many unique rivalries that you're able to build when you see these teams as often as we're going to see them.

"The back-to-back games, the baseball-style series, it's going to be physical. It's going to be a battle. If you're not prepared to be a part of that, you're not going to have a lot of success."

Burke, who recently authored a memoir about his years in NHL front offices, used to head up hockey operations for the Canucks, Leafs, and Flames, and he made waves in 2008 at his first press conference in Toronto for declaring that his teams would be pugnacious, belligerent, and truculent. He told theScore he expects "hostility and truculence" from the North Division at large, since foes won't have to wait long to settle scores.

"You're going to have a cheap shot or a perceived cheap shot in a game and you're going to see an instant response, or a response the very next night," he said.

It's harder to project when Canada's teams will produce a winner - a worthy successor to the '93 Canadiens. Burke looks at Toronto, at Montreal and Calgary's readiness for the playoff grind, at Vancouver's outstanding youth, and he concludes there's no shortage of candidates to end the drought. As puck drop approached, he said the country's Stanley Cup prospects will be brighter over the next five years than they'd been for much of the salary-cap era.

Pritchard is a neutral observer, but as an Ontarian and ambassador of the Cup, he knows how well Canada is represented on rosters league-wide, a point of national pride. He spent several weeks this offseason in balmy Tampa and returned there shortly after Christmas, planning to escort the trophy to Amalie Arena on Wednesday when Steven Stamkos - the captain from the Toronto area - and the Lightning open their title defense.

"I think as Canadians, we should be pretty honored and proud that our game has now been received worldwide," Pritchard said. "Not only is it Canada's gift to the world, we now get to see an all-Canadian division. I think that's pretty cool."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.