Back in September 1925, Frederick Wilson, sports editor at the Globe, explained the fear among hockey fans that Canadian teams might not be able to compete for players against the new US teams like New York or Boston that were entering the pro league. “Will it be a matter of money?” Wilson headlined his piece. And for about a century, money was the recurrent nexus of the Canadian hockey panic, proven by franchise departures and depleted buying power.
At the time, Wilson reassured everyone that, no matter the big US cash, everyone on the ice would be Canadian anyway. “It will be some years before the [US] will be in a position to furnish players,” he wrote. He was right about that. It took a long time for the US to catch up to Canada in on-ice talent. But now that it has, should we expect Americans to want to play anywhere else than the US? For 100 years Canada has worried that the US would just buy all the best hockey players. But now it makes its own and, as the new NHL season gets underway on Tuesday night, they want to go home.
It’s difficult to pinpoint where this all started. But the general feeling, given the timing, is that something happened around this year’s Olympics that prompted US-born players to turn their backs on Canada. Maybe it started earlier, in 2025, after the 4 Nations Face-Off. Or maybe it was just in the wind, given the new geopolitical tensions between the two countries. In any event, as the 2026-27 NHL season kicks off Tuesday, the divide is back – or at least seems to have deepened.
Quinn Hughes was the first to jump, leaving Vancouver for Minnesota last December after making it clear he wouldn’t re-sign. In April, Jim Rutherford, the Canucks’ president of hockey operations, was blunt about what underpinned it. “Some people think Quinn left here because the team wasn’t any good. He was leaving anyway,” Rutherford said, pointing to Matthew Tkachuk, who had left Calgary in 2022. “He wanted to go back to the US, and he went.” And, Rutherford noted, Hughes wouldn’t be the last.
Rutherford was right. As the 2025-26 season ended, Tkachuk’s brother, Brady, captain of the Ottawa Senators, asked to go. Sure enough, he got his wish and landed in Florida with his brother. “Blood is thicker than water, and let’s just say that his father and his brother got in his kitchen,” Senators owner Michael Andlauer said earlier this month. “Ultimately, the decision was made to go and play with his brother. It’s a decision that was out of our control to a certain degree.”
Detroit’s now-former captain Dylan Larkin also wants out. And while it’s a US city he’s leaving, his reported potential destinations don’t include any Canadian teams – including the one who’s been asking about him for a while, Montreal, who have plenty of cap space and an exciting young roster built on fresh contract extensions. But it’s all moot. According to TSN, Larkin won’t consider any Canadian team at all.
Which brings us to Connor Hellebuyck, whose story is a little more complicated. Last month, the Winnipeg Jets goaltender revealed he’d requested to be traded “several months” earlier. It came as a surprise. When Hellebuyck signed a seven-year contract worth $59.5m in 2023, he said that he was “ready to be a Jet for life and bring a Cup to this city”. But things changed. For one thing, the Jets have faltered and a Cup looks unlikely soon. Then there were the Olympics. Hellebuyck wasn’t the only reason the US beat Canada in the gold-medal game, but he was a big one (he made 41 saves) – good enough, anyway, for Donald Trump to award Hellebuyck the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That, and the White House visit that came with it, soured some fans and, according to Hellebuyck, led to threats and online abuse aimed at his family.
Hellebuyck is reportedly open to a competitive US team, and talks with Buffalo stalled over Winnipeg’s asking price. It’s been suggested that Hellebuyck would accept a move to Edmonton or Montreal, so it’s possible he’s swayed less by anti-Canada bias than he is by wanting to win, but who knows? For now, he’s been suspended for failing to report to training camp, and will sit in limbo – presumably somewhere between Manitoba and his home state of Michigan – until it’s resolved.
In fairness, none of these players has publicly decried Canada. There are legitimate reasons to go, including family ties and better tax rates. Nor is it a universal exit. Toronto Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews is staying put for now, likely influenced by the team’s management overhaul and offseason additions. Ultimately, these are hockey players. They have the right to play where they want, contract allowing.
But rights and respect are two different things, and that second one is tricky. Rutherford’s prediction echoed throughout the summer because it plucked a chord deep in the Canadian psyche. For a long time, the problem seemed to be one of money. But money problems can be fixed – and largely were. Since the salary cap was introduced in 2005, Canadian teams have been able to move and manipulate the numbers to compete with their US peers.
But what they can’t manufacture is desire. “You have to want to play for Ottawa,” Andlauer said of Tkachuk’s departure. Lots of players still do want to play in Canada. The worry now is that the best American ones don’t.
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