After simulating the AFFL through over 120 seasons to the present day, my mind turned to applying the same concept to another country in a similar situation without a real-life large scale national league of its own, complete with promotion and relegation across multiple connected tiers. The natural choice was the latest country I have moved to, Canada, and (ice) hockey, the sport for which it has primarily been responsible for codifying the world's modern rules.
While not learned in the ins and outs of Canada's national sport, it is unavoidable not to notice the financial and cultural heft of its southern neighbour in the expansion and overall identity of the premier hockey league in the world. So I got to wondering what it would look like if Canada's national league had remained and prospered within its own borders. Given the dynamics between the two nations (and the proximity of almost all of Canada's population to the US border) it's a completely unrealistic idea of course but, as I did with the AFFL, the composition of federal electorates in the House of Commons overseen by Elections Canada, and their historical evolution listed on Wikipedia, became my blueprint.
The custom to bestow geographical names on all electorates (or ridings, as they are known locally) has made placing their current and historical locations much simpler than their Australian equivalents, though with more than double the number of seats and far more frequent abolitions, amalgamations and re-creations (not to mention some selected ridings in earlier years gaining multiple seats), I found team line-ups through the decades were going to be too transient if I organised the league structure in exactly the same way as the AFFL, with one team for each electoral seat.
My solution was to introduce the concept of 'Riding Strength', with city or county ridings with matching place names (or multiple seats in the same riding) pooled into single teams that are, in theory, comparitively stronger and better resourced than smaller cities and more sparsely populated rural areas. In addition, for rural ridings named for shifting amalgamations of different localities (eg "Algoma--Manitoulin--Kapuskasing"), a CNHL team will in general be named for the first locality in the riding name only, in order to provide more continuity of identity.
The final question was when to commence the competition. Unlike Australia, when Federation in 1901 conveniently co-incides with the era of births of the amateur sporting leagues that became the biggest professional competitions of today, Canada's Confederation in 1867 comes a few decades earlier. While still completely unviable in real life as the starting point for a league of this scale, I have settled on 1896, the year of the first federal election after the Stanley Cup began to be awarded from 1893, and a decade or so after the completion of the transcontinental railway.
Region | Years | Total | First Division | Second Division |
Ontario | 1896–1925 | 53 | 18 | 2 x 17–18 |
Québec | 1896–1925 | 51–56 | 17–18 | 2 x 17–19 |
Maritimes | 1896–1925 | 26–33 | 13–16 | 13–17 |
Western | 1896–1904 | 15 | 15 | -- |
Western | 1904–1917 | 27–35 | 14–17 | 13–18 |
Western | 1917–1925 | 49 | 17 | 2 x 16 |
Years | Total | First Division | Second Division | Third Division | Fourth Division |
1925–1949 | 185 | 20 | 2 x 18 | 4 x 16 | 4 x 16–17 |
1949– | 197 | 20 | 2 x 18 | 4 x 17 | 4 x 18–19 |
Total | Ontario | Québec | Maritimes | Western | |
First Division | 20 | 7 | 7 | 3 | 3 |
Second Division | 36 | 13 | 13 | 4 | 6 |
Third Division | 64 | 16 | 16 | 8 | 24 |
Fourth Division | 65 | 16 | 14 | 10 | 25 |
Total | 185 | 52 | 50 | 25 | 58 |
Favourite Strength | Favourite Win | Underdog Strength | Underdog Win |
Equal | 50% | Equal | 50% |
4 | 57% | 3 | 43% |
3 | 60% | 2 | 40% |
2 | 66% | 1 | 33% |
3 | 75% | 1 | 25% |
4 | 80% | 1 | 20% |