AS I SEE IT COLUMN: Do American NHL players want to leave their Canadian teams?

It appears as if a trend is possibly emerging in the NHL: American-born players on Canadian rosters wanting to return home to the excited states and play for an American team.

This all started when the late Johnny Gaudreau left Calgary for Columbus, for less money than what the Flames were offering. About a week later Matthew Tkachuk requested a trade in Calgary and was moved to Florida.

Then defenseman Quinn Hughes wanted out of Vancouver. He got his wish and now plays for the Minnesota Wild.

The “I want out of Canada” theory recently hit close to home when the Jets’ Connor Hellebuyck made it pretty obvious he is re-evaluating his contract extension in Winnipeg given the team’s poor performance this year.

Now there are rumblings that Senators captain Brady Tkachuk wants out of Ottawa.

But the biggest American fish in the NHL musing about leaving Canada is Toronto’s Auston Matthews, (although he may decide to stay in the centre of the universe a little longer given that the Leafs won the draft lottery and will have the first overall pick).

Time will tell if “I want to go back to America” is nothing more than a whisper campaign or if it really is a “thing.”

If that anti-Canadian sentiment is real, this will obviously have massive implications in the near- and long-term ways the Jets and other Canadian teams construct their rosters. Is it worth any Canadian-based team taking a risk on an American player via a trade or a draft choice if they might eventually become resentful about playing north of the border and demand a trade?

The feeling by some fans is that Americans are softer than Canadians (especially in the playoffs), and that they treat playing hockey more of a job than as a passion that is typically so evident in Canadian players who have grown up in a country where hockey is practically in our national DNA.

Exacerbating this problem for Canadian teams and general managers is the fact that the talent level of American-born players gets better each year. This will force GMs to think really seriously if they should acquire a U.S. player because of his excellent skill level and accept the potential risk of that player someday wanting out, versus acquiring a Canadian player who will love playing at home.

Then there’s the geopolitical issues that seriously complicate matters. There’s no telling what the deeply unstable criminal in the White House will do in his remaining two plus years in office, but it’s a safe bet tensions between Canada and the U.S. will likely get worse before they get better.

After the Olympics, the way Team USA so willingly allowed themselves to be used as political props by the cognitively declining president, made it clear that American NHL superstars simply don’t have any issue with the criminality, chaos, cruelty and corruption emanating from the White House – which is their undeniable right.

The U.S. players may resent how they themselves, their country or their president is treated in a Canadian society that is sick of American tariffs, tired of their insults, genuinely worried about their threats of annexation and frustrated by its illegal war of choice in Iran, not to mention America’s continued military, economic and diplomatic support of Israel’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

If a player grew up in America and drank the Kool-Aid that the U.S. is the “greatest country that has ever existed” and was playing hockey in a Canadian city where those feelings are shared by almost no one (except the right-wing traitors in Alberta that want to secede from Canada), it makes a lot of sense that American players would feel way more comfortable playing for a U.S.-based team.

Right now, GMs in Winnipeg, Ottawa and Toronto are working feverishly to keep their American superstars in Canada.

But is sucking up to whiny American players ultimately worth it?

Who should a GM have on his roster, a disgruntled U.S. player or a gruntled Canadian player?