Is Hockey Still
Canada’s Game?
Canadians still lead the NHL — but their grip is loosening, the Americans are surging, and the league has quietly gone global.
For most of hockey’s history, the answer was obvious. Canada didn’t just play the game — it owned it. In the 1980s, more than three-quarters of every NHL roster was Canadian-born. Today, that number tells a very different story.
On opening night of the 2025–26 season, all 32 teams iced 726 players born in 17 different countries. Canada is still on top. But the gap between “Canada’s game” and “everyone’s game” has never been thinner.
01 The Canadian crown is slipping
Canada sends 304 players to the NHL — comfortably the most of any nation. But a decade ago that share sat at roughly half the league, and in the 1980s it towered above 75%. The slope only points one way.
Meanwhile, the United States has never been stronger. Its 195 players mark an all-time high — more American-born players on opening-night rosters than any season in league history.
Canada still leads by 109 players. But the lead is shrinking season over season — and the trend line, not the total, is the story.
02 A league of nations
Strip away North America and a third nation steps forward: Sweden, with 72 players (9.9%). Behind it sits a deep international bench — Finland, Czechia, Switzerland, and a long tail that now includes a record spread of birth countries.
† “Other nations” is led by Russia, whose players are excluded from the 2026 Olympic field but very much present in the NHL.
03 Two countries, 32 teams
The players are global, but the business is not. Of the league’s 32 franchises, 25 are based in the United States and just 7 in Canada — meaning 78% of NHL teams play south of the border.
Canada 7 TEAMS
United States 25 TEAMS
04 32 years of waiting
Here’s the twist that stings north of the border: despite supplying four in ten players, no Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since 1993. That’s a 32-year drought for the country that invented the sport.
Edmonton came within two wins in back-to-back Finals, losing to the Florida Panthers in 2024 and again in 2025. Eight Canadian clubs have reached the Final since ’93. All eight came home empty-handed.
The bottom line
- 01Canada still leads at 41.9% (304 players) — but it was 75%+ in the 1980s.
- 02The USA is at a record high: 26.9% (195 players), the most ever.
- 03Nearly a third of the league — 31.2% — comes from 15 other nations.
- 0478% of teams are American (25 of 32); only 7 are Canadian.
- 0532-year Cup drought for Canadian teams — the longest in the sport’s heartland.
