John Tavares is packing up and taking his business north of the border. The newest Toronto Maple Leaf signing has cause a wave of emotion from the hockey world. Leafs fans are generally ecstatic, Isles fans are in dismay, and the rest of the league is somewhere between fear, congratulatory, or arguing about how it effects the Leafs cap space in the future.
No matter how you slice it, everyone has an opinion.
With hockey such a big thing for Canadians, it is unsurprising that lots of digital research on the former Isles captain would have been done north of the border. According to this graph posted by Heart of NHL, it was a pretty significant difference.
That is no joke. This doesn’t even take into about the proportional population differences. Canada has a population hovering somewhere around 36 million people. Contrast that with America’s 326 million and it makes the graph even more eye-opening.
This graph was posted before JT signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs, one can only imagine what it would look like now.
(H/T Twitter/Heart of NHL)
