Chris Selley: Revoking the Stanley Cup from the NHL is a trade-war bargaining chip worth trying

The U.S.-Canada kerfuffle took an interesting tangent this week when the Buffalo Bills announced the Barenaked Ladies would sing the Canadian national anthem on Sept. 17 at the Bills’ new and lavishly taxpayer-funded US$2.1-billion stadium. (Even that kind of money doesn’t even get you a roof, nowadays!) Everyone seemed to treat it as a good news story, which it was. Just like it was a good news story when Buffalo Sabres fans belted out O Canada when the anthem singer’s mic cut out at a game in April. (The Sabres play both anthems before all home games.)

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This is the sort of relationship Canadians and Americans had, still have and, should sanity prevail, will have more of and better in the future. We can’t quit each other, in the long term, and we shouldn’t want to.

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The anthems are also good business, naturally. By some estimates, roughly 15 per cent of Bills’ and Sabres’ season-ticket holders commute from Canada. But fewer Canadians crossed Niagara River bridges in June 2026 than in any non-pandemic June this century. That’s leaving a mark on the Buffalo economy. There’s no doubt travel is one of the few levers Canada has to deploy, even if certain jurisdictions — Buffalo, for example, where three-quarters of voters went for Kamala Harris in 2024 — don’t make much sense as strategic targets.

So, hang on … should Canadians be travelling to Bills games at all? For that matter, should the Barenaked Ladies be playing for billionaire Bills (and Sabres) owner Terry Pegula, a Republican fracking tycoon? Canadian artists who’ve cancelled U.S. tours “because of Trump” have gotten good press. And Canadians love to judge each other’s civic spirit.

You mustn’t travel to the U.S., even if it’s for “a reunion with your dearest friend,” a Globe and Mail columnist informed us last year. “Canadians should not visit the U.S. unless necessary. I am not going again unless I have to for work,” a Toronto Star sports columnist wrote on X … as if “work trumps friends and family” is a concept we must all accept. Back in the Globe, Labour Day having come and gone, snowbirds were enjoined this week: “By all means, venture abroad … But for the love of country, stand in solidarity with your Canadian kin and skip the States for your leisure travel.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney seems to be of like mind. “The most powerful actions have (been) buying Canadian and travelling in Canada,” he said in a video posted this week, having not long ago returned from vacation in deepest Tuscany.

I’m glad the Bills are doing O Canada. Cross-border harmony is good, wherever we can find it. But I do think Canada can leverage sport in a funny sort of way that might really unite people from coast to coast: Instead of judging each other’s travel and consumer preferences, let’s take back the Stanley Cup.

The NHL intends to expand, again. Leading candidates reportedly include twice-failed NHL market Atlanta (whose previous franchises now play, ahem, in Calgary and Winnipeg); Phoenix, the most legendary failed hockey market this side of sub-Saharan Africa (the Coyotes now play in Salt Lake City); and Houston and Austin, which have at least never lost an NHL team before.

There’s nothing wrong with U.S. expansion, including in the sun belt: Four of the Original Six NHL teams were American, after all. But meanwhile, a 10-year-old arena in Quebec City and a newly refurbished one in Hamilton are just sitting there waiting for the NHL. If there’s no one willing to invest in a team there, I think a league that cared even a tiny bit about its product would be quite concerned that no one thinks they can sell the game to people who actually play it.

“The Stanley Cup belongs to the NHL,” Brian O’Neill, who was then one of the Cup’s two Canadian trustees (by terms stipulated by Lord Stanley himself) told the Globe in 2005. This was after a group of beer-league players challenged the NHL’s right to simply not award the Cup when a lockout shut down the season. (Annoyingly, they settled with the league under confidential terms. What was the point?)

The Cup has “belonged” to the NHL, in effect, since 1947. But legally, it’s not that simple. “The dispute over ownership of the Stanley Cup turns on a unique blend of ancient doctrines and modern rules about property rights in both physical and intangible assets,” University of Ottawa law professor Jeremy de Beer wrote about the controversy in a 2008 paper. But since Lord Stanley created the Stanley Cup trust as Canada’s governor general — i.e., as a representative of the Crown — de Beer said it was arguably never within anyone’s rights to cede de-facto control of.

I’m not suggesting we just lock the Cup in a basement. The NHL could still award it, though perhaps a repatriated and revamped Stanley Cup trusteeship might advocate for Canadian teams’ best interests in what is an inherently unbalanced league: Canadian teams generally don’t enjoy the same outrageous taxpayer subsidies as many American ones do for new arenas, and the tax burden does not work at all in Canadian teams’ favour when attracting players relative to Florida, Nevada or Texas. The NHL knows the Stanley Cup is one of its greatest brand assets, if not its greatest. I can’t imagine any other country tolerating their national sport being abused to the extent Canada tolerates it from the NHL.

The only argument I can see against at least trying to renegotiate or litigate the Stanley Cup agreement is that it’s silly and impractical. That’s good Canadian common sense to a point. But this whole trade-war situation is pretty silly. And unlike just about every other Canadian gambit in this trade war, this wouldn’t pit Canadian against Canadian. It would be an act of, or at least an attempt at, cultural rescue.

National Post
cselley@postmedia.com

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