Imagine, for a minute, that an alien was visiting North America for the first time and observed the National Hockey League. They would see:
about half the players are Canadian;
TV viewership in Canadian cities is enormous;
TV money paid by Canadian television corporations is worth hundreds of millions of dollars;
most of the coaches are Canadian;
most of the media interest generated is from Canadian newspapers;
the NHL was founded in Canada and has a headquarters in Toronto;
the championship trophy, the Stanley Cup, is named after a Governor-General of Canada and was intended to be awarded to the best amateur hockey team in Canada;
the teams with the most titles are Canadian (Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs);
the highest-attended teams are Canadian;
for the first several decades of its existence, the NHL Commissioner was Canadian;
the "national" in National Hockey League stood for Canada when the league was founded in 1917, consisting of only Canadian teams;
most of the post-season awards, like the Hart Trophy or the Vezina Trophy, are named after Canadians;
the majority of players in the Hockey Hall of Fame are Canadian, and indeed the majority of the NHL's superstars have been Canadian.
One would think, therefore, that the NHL is a Canadian league whose purpose was to cater to Canadian fans and provide a national sports league as an institution. But the exact opposite is true - the league is made up of 30 teams, only 6 of whom are located in Canada. Players are paid in American money, watched mostly by American fans, whose teams are owned mostly by Americans. The commissioner is an American who has made it the goal of the league to cater to American fans in an attempt to win over enough supporters to garner higher attendance and a more lucrative TV deal, thus earning yet more money for the American owners of the teams.
Clearly, the NHL cannot be called a Canadian league, unlike the Canadian Football League, for example. It is not entirely an American league, either, however, as the prior evidence shows.
But the question is why is the NHL not a Canadian league?
A Canadian league would be maintained and supported with the interests of Canadians and Canadian teams in mind, with goals of developing primarily Canadian talent and providing an institutional framework for a pillar of sporting culture in the country. The reason none of this is the case, as it is in European countries for example, is because the NHL is run as a business whose goal is to make money, not provide a sporting institution.
In other countries, like Germany and England, their number one sport has in the past decade or two become massively profitable. But this is a relatively recent trend, being massively helped out by the invent of satellite, pay-per-view television, globalization, the internet, and foreign takeovers by businessmen. Soccer leagues in Europe were set up around the same time that the NHL was being formed, yet these leagues were designed to be simple sporting institutions, to crown a national champion - not to make money for the owners. Obviously, if a club doesn't make enough money they can go insolvent and thus cease to exist, so money does play some factor. But it isn't the primary goal (or at least it hasn't been until recently) of soccer clubs to make a profit for their owners/shareholders. This is part of the reason why very small countries, like Portugal, Scotland, or Belgium, have their own soccer leagues rather than being a part of their bigger, richer neighbors. The NHL, by contrast, has always had this business-like orientation.
The first American teams were invited to join the league when Canadian teams from smaller cities were unable to keep up profitability. For a while, under the so-called Original Six, one could argue that the NHL was still a Canadian league that just happened to have some American teams in it - much like the CFL did for a couple years when there were a few American teams to maintain solvency. After all, even though Chicago or Detroit might win the cup every now and then, almost all of the players, coaches, management, etc., were Canadians who were winning a Canadian trophy.
But since the mid-60's, the NHL has slowly turned from a Canadian league to a sort of North American league with a decidedly pro-American interest. The reason for that is money. The United States has more cities with big populations and corporations able to support the millions of dollars and huge stadiums necessary to maintain a multi-million dollar salary. The potential TV audience in the U.S. dwarfs that of Canada - if only they can be cajoled into watching the game.
If one looks closer, it's obvious just how oriented towards American interest the league is and how much of that interest is in the desire of making a profit. For example, a Canadian league like the CFL has a website that caters to Canadians; the CFL has two official names and logos for French and English and the official website is in both languages. The NHL website is unilingual English and uses American spelling, rarely posting things that would pertain primarily to Canadians.
The game itself is also designed to generate money, unlike European soccer or hockey leagues. The ice is smaller in North America so the players are able to appear to skate faster, hit each other more, shoot more, score more, and fight more. Fighting is tolerated as it's believed to be a fan-pleaser.
With smaller ice, the stadium can be bigger, thereby bringing in more revenue. TV commercials are allowed, bringing in even more revenue.
More than half the teams are allowed to enter the playoffs, and each series is a best-of-seven, thereby giving the best possible chance of hosting multiple games, which leads to yet more revenue in tickets, merchandise, TV, etc. Ties have been eliminated in favor of overtime and shootouts, presumably because ties are boring and shootouts awesome.
Smaller ice size leads to more frequent confrontation between players, higher quantity of shots, more goals due to ricochets, etc.
By contrast, European hockey leagues have wider ice that provides for more fluid, stylistic play. Fighting is not tolerated and there are no commercial breaks. In places where hockey is very popular, most cities have teams and they are not required to pay a fee or guarantee profitability before entering the top division - all they have to do is prove they can compete on a sporting level. European soccer leagues haven't really changed the rules of the game or the size of the field to directly affect the nature of the game - the offsides rule has been kept in place, goal sizes are uniform, there are no playoffs to determine the national champion, etc.
Does a sports league have to be run as a business? Partly, but it shouldn't nor does it need to be its primary purpose.
Obviously, nothing is going to change the NHL from its current format, composition, or business interests. Most fans cannot imagine not having American teams, American fans, or American money. And if the NHL had never allowed American teams to join, then the all-Canadian version would certainly have smaller payrolls, less attendance, and possibly a lower standard of play.
But, it would also be a league where the champion was guaranteed to be a true national champion of Canada - unlike the past 18 years or so where an American team has won a Canadian trophy. It would be a league where it wouldn't matter how small your city or town was, if your team was good enough to play in the top division, it would. Unlike when Winnipeg and Quebec City lost their teams because the Canadian dollar was doing terribly against the American and revenues could not keep up with expenditures. Canadian fans wouldn't have to fume about having teams in places that don't like hockey, like Nashville or Phoenix.
It would be a true national hockey league that would be there for Canada and Canadians, not Americans and profit.
