Please let a Canadian team end this silly rite of spring

The first part of May brings some annual rites: the Kentucky Derby. Blooming flowers. Mother's Day.

And carping among some Canadian hockey fans over whether they should rally around the remaining Canadian teams in the Stanley Cup Playoffs out of a sense of patriotic duty. After all, none of the country's teams have won the Cup since the Montreal Canadiens did it in 1993.

A certain restaurant chain has pushed this narrative in recent years, as though it is obviously true that Canadians should want a Canadian team to win the Cup. That position completely ignores the fact that Calgary Flames fans generally do not wish good things for the Edmonton Oilers (and vice versa).

There's more likely to be enmity among Canadian teams than back-slapping support, which is how it should be: It's called the Battle of Ontario, not the Friendship Circle of Ontario.

And yet, silly as it is to suggest that Canadians should only root for Canadian teams at this point in the season - especially when any American team is just as likely to have key Canadian players - there is, anecdotally at least, a sense that more Canadians are getting behind the idea that it would be good for one of the country's teams to bring Stanley home.

When the Winnipeg Jets were in the process of blowing their first-round series against the St. Louis Blues, before they stormed back to win Game 7, there was more pity than delight on social media - even though the main source of Winnipeg's pain was an American goalie having a meltdown.

When the Edmonton Oilers came desperately close to winning it all last year, a lot of non-Oilers fans had given themselves over to the idea that if anyone other than their team was going to break the Stanley Cup drought, it might as well be Connor McDavid, the player who will take the Team Canada mantle that Sidney Crosby took from Wayne Gretzky.

Are we just going soft? Is 32 years time enough to wear down a lot of natural defenses? Would a lot of Canadians simply welcome the idea of a new NHL season that does not begin with references to Canada's Stanley Cup drought? (I confess that I would very much like to not have to write about that for a while.)

If more Canadians have warmed up to the idea of rooting for a Canadian team, then the math is conveniently in their favor. This is the first year that three Canadian teams have made the second round of the playoffs since 2004. There are people on the cusp of graduating from university who have never in their lives seen this many Canadian teams win a playoff series in the same season.

Because of the way the brackets line up, it's at least possible that Canada will have three of the four semifinalists, a situation that would simultaneously cause utter glee in Sportsnet's executive offices and make Gary Bettman and the U.S. TV networks very sad. I think we can confidently say that a Winnipeg-Edmonton Western final would not do boffo ratings in New York or Los Angeles.

The funny thing about Toronto, Edmonton, and Winnipeg all making it this far - which is, admittedly, not that far - is that they are only doing what has long been expected of them. In McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, the Oilers have two Hart Trophy winners at center. The Maple Leafs, with Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, and William Nylander, have three of the most gifted offensive players in franchise history, all in their primes. The Jets carefully assembled a loaded young roster and then managed to lock down homegrown stars Connor Hellebuyck and Mark Scheifele with long-term extensions in a city that's on a lot of no-trade lists, disproving the idea that elite players will flee the first chance they get.

The Canadian-team Cup drought should, in other words, have been broken by now. The annual drought stories feature all kinds of possible explanations for Stanley's long metaphorical absence: poor drafting, too much media pressure, difficulty attracting and retaining talent in the smaller markets. But these teams have long ago proven that it is possible to build a Cup contender north of the border. They just haven't done the winning part.

Math alone suggests the drought should have been broken long ago. Even though the league has added eight teams since 1993, Canada still has about 22% of the NHL's teams, meaning a one-in-five chance of a random Cup win. Three-plus decades is a long time for one in five to not hit.

But the Leafs, after beating the Florida Panthers on Monday night, have their first lead in a second-round series or later since being up 1-0 in the 2002 Eastern Conference Final. The Oilers, after wobbling to begin their series against the Kings, finally looked like the team that went almost all the way last year. The Jets were all but dead and buried, and now they have two home games to see if Hellebuyck has solved his playoff yips.

For the first time in a long time in early May, asking "Is this Finally Canada's Year?" doesn't seem so outlandish.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.