Montreal Canadiens: Fighting an Unfair Financial Battle

Every year, we talk about the Stanley Cup being the hardest trophy in professional sports to win. We talk about drafting, development, goaltending, coaching, injuries, deadline acquisitions and whether a general manager can find that elusive final piece. For the Montreal Canadiens and six other Canadian teams, there is another factor that doesn’t get nearly as much attention, despite potentially having a very real impact on who can build and maintain a championship team.

Money. More specifically, how much of that money actually ends up in a player’s pocket, a factor in players choice destinations.

The NHL salary cap is supposed to create competitive balance. Every team is given essentially the same amount of room to build its roster, which sounds wonderfully fair on paper. The problem is that the same salary does not necessarily have the same value to a player in every NHL city.

A US$10 million contract is still US$10 million on the salary cap, but what the player gets to keep after taxes can vary considerably depending on where he plays. The actual calculation is more complicated because NHL players pay taxes in multiple jurisdictions based on where they play, but the basic advantage of lower-tax markets remains very real.

And when you start looking at where the Stanley Cup has gone, it becomes difficult to ignore.

Using the tax figures in my comparison, the NHL average is approximately 44.65 percent. Of the last 15 Stanley Cup champions, 13 have come from teams below that average. That’s 86.7 percent of the championships.

RANK	NHL TEAM	TAX % ($10M)	CUPS (last 15 yrs)
T-1	TOR	53.09	0
T-1	OTT	53.09	0
3	VAN	52.99	0
4	MTL	52.95	0
T-5	SJS	50.63	0
T-5	LAK	50.63	2
T-5	ANA	50.63	0
8	NYR	50.09	0
9	WIN	50.07	0
T-10	EDM	47.60	0
T-10	CGY	47.60	0
12	NJD	46.99	0
13	MIN	46.36	0
T-14	NYI	46.22	0
T-14	BUF	46.22	0
16	BOS	45.17	0
17	PHI	43.39	0
18	DET	43.22	0
19	CBJ	42.56	0
20	WSH	42.32	1
21	STL	42.27	1
22	CHI	41.52	2
23	UTA	41.12	0
24	CAR	41.06	1
25	COL	40.97	1
26	PIT	40.64	2
T-27	* SEA	36.57	0
T-27	NSH	36.57	0
T-27	DAL	36.57	0
T-27	VGK	36.57	1
T-27	TBL	36.57	2
T-27	FLA	36.57	2
AVG		44.65

* New high-income tax of 9.9% taking effect on January 1, 2028. Joined in 2021-22.

There are, of course, two exceptions.

Los Angeles won in 2012 and 2014, despite sitting considerably above the league average in taxation. But this is where we need to be careful with the numbers. Those are not two different high-tax teams disproving the theory. They are one team winning two Cups.

Los Angeles is the exception, not the rule. In fact, since the Kings’ 2014 championship, 12 consecutive Stanley Cups have been won by teams currently sitting below the NHL’s average tax rate. That includes Tampa Bay winning twice, Pittsburgh winning twice, Florida winning twice, and championships by Chicago, Washington, St. Louis, Colorado, Vegas and Carolina.

At some point, in spite of league officials’ denial, coincidence starts clearing its throat and asking if we are paying attention.

This doesn’t mean taxes win hockey games. A low tax rate won’t stop a bad general manager from making bad trades, a goalie from giving up soft goals or a coach from pulling his hair out in Game 7. Hockey is far too complicated to reduce a championship to a tax bracket.

But taxes can influence where players want to play, particularly when the money becomes substantial. If two teams offer essentially the same contract, one player may be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional take-home income over the life of that contract. That’s not pocket change, even to someone making millions.

It is like giving two people the same-sized pie, except one of them has to hand a much larger slice to the government before he gets to eat it.

And this is where Canadian teams face another potential disadvantage.

No Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since the Montreal Canadiens in 1993. That’s not a typo. Thirty-three years have passed since a Canadian-based team last lifted the Cup. Seven Canadian franchises now compete in the NHL, yet all seven have watched American teams celebrate year after year. The NHL itself has described it as the league’s longest active Stanley Cup drought.

The timing is certainly interesting. Gary Bettman officially became the NHL’s Commissioner on February 1, 1993, and Montreal won the Cup that June.

I am not suggesting Bettman caused Canada’s Cup drought, although some will. Let’s not put on tinfoil hats and completely ignore that fact either. But the timing makes for an interesting historical footnote.

What is much more relevant is what has happened financially since then.

Canadian teams operate in a different economic environment. Much of their local revenue is generated in Canadian dollars, while NHL player salaries and many league financial obligations are ultimately tied to the U.S. dollar. When the Canadian dollar is weak, the cost of maintaining a US-dollar payroll becomes more expensive in Canadian-dollar terms.

So a Canadian team can potentially be squeezed from both directions. Its players may face higher personal taxation, while the organization can face additional currency pressure when paying its US-dollar-based payroll.

That doesn’t make winning impossible. Edmonton reached the Stanley Cup Final in 2024 and again in 2025. Montreal reached the Final in 2021. Vancouver, Calgary and Ottawa have also made the Final since 1993. The Canadian teams have had their chances. They simply haven’t been able to finish the job.

The question is whether the NHL’s salary cap creates the appearance of a level playing field without actually creating one. Every team may have roughly the same number of dollars available to spend. But those dollars don’t necessarily buy the same thing.

A player choosing between markets isn’t looking only at the number on the contract. He is looking at his family, his lifestyle, his taxes and, increasingly, what that contract will actually mean in his bank account.

Meanwhile, a Canadian team can be trying to build the same championship roster while dealing with taxation that makes its market less attractive to some players and currency fluctuations that can make its payroll more expensive.

That’s a pretty significant handicap in a league where the difference between winning and losing can be one goal, one player or one bad bounce.

The NHL may have built a salary-cap system designed to level the playing field. Perhaps the problem is that the field itself isn’t level.

And the Stanley Cup results over the past decade and a half are giving us plenty of reason to wonder whether we should start paying more attention to the slope. If the trend continues, the future of some Canadian teams could be in question.