Oh, Canada! What Befell Your Sport?

April was bad enough, but the cruelest month in Canada this year is May. The Stanley Cup playoffs are unfolding in all their glory, and there’s no Canadian team in sight.

Mario Lemieux, Patrick Roy and other Canadian stars have been strutting their stuff, but they’ve been doing it south of the border.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s NHL coverage the legendary “Hockey Night in Canada” - has been rechristened “Hockey Not in Canada.” With only U.S. teams in action, TV ratings have plunged by more than half from when the big-market Canadian teams were playing.

This is the first year since 1974 that no team from hockey’s birthplace reached the second round of the playoffs. Back then, it was just Montreal and Toronto that exited early. This year, however, all five of the Canadian teams that made the playoffs were ousted by April 28 in six games or less, and the country is depressed.

“This has to be some sort of new low in the history of our national game,” wrote the Toronto Star’s Garth Woolsey.

The playoff failure came at a bad time for Canadian fans, deepening the bitterness engendered by last year’s departure of the Quebec Nordiques for Denver and this year’s flight of the Winnipeg Jets to Phoenix.

The Jets’ sixth-game playoff loss to Detroit marked not only the end of the season for the team, but the end of big league sports in Winnipeg. Fans cheered their team deliriously during the game, then wept as they milled around on the ice afterwards.

“It’s sad they’re going,” said Brent Boina, 20, who paid $150 for a ticket. “Why Americanize hockey?”

Boina touched on a raw nerve. Many Canadian fans feel the NHL has become increasingly U.S.-oriented in recent years as new franchises open in the Sunbelt and small-market Canadian teams struggle.

There are worries that the Ottawa Senators and Edmonton Oilers, perhaps even the Calgary Flames, eventually may follow the Jets and Nordiques south of the border, where taxes are lower and corporate sponsors more free-spending.

Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver are not in jeopardy, despite their lackluster performance in the playoffs. But the other three clubs are far from wealthy, as evidenced by a recent Financial World magazine survey of North America’s 111 major league franchises.

Ottawa ranked 103rd in net value, Calgary 104th and Edmonton 109th, with Winnipeg’s departed Jets in last place.

NHL spokesman Arthur Pincus said league officials were optimistic Ottawa would survive. As for Edmonton, he said the club was eligible for crucial financial aid from the league as part of a plan to bolster small-market Canadian teams - but only if it met goals for selling season tickets and luxury boxes.

To some Canadians, the most painful wound this season was realizing that a team from Florida had succeeded where all their teams had failed. The expansion Panthers, in their third season, advanced to the Eastern Conference finals.

“Surely there will be an audit,” wrote the Toronto Globe and Mail. “There will be hockey in Miami. None in Montreal.”

After the Canadian teams were knocked out of the NHL playoffs, there was one big-time Canadian team left in action - the national squad, composed of NHLers from non-playoff teams, competing at the world championships in Vienna. But even they fell short, losing the gold-medal match to the Czech Republic.