Is it safe to say that the US teams are now dominating the Canadian teams or is it that the US teams got smart and selected the best Canadian players to play in their teams?
Well it's been 16 years since there were no Canadian teams in the second round of the playoffs, and the Canucks were in the final last year, so if you're not CBC worrying about ratings for the rest of the run there's not much to sound the alarm over. :)
There are only a handful of NHL teams that have a roster with much less than 45% Canadian born players. Most have upwards of 50 and 60%. The balance of of the teams with fewer Canadians are typically dominated by Europeans and not Americans, who generally make up just 20 or 25% of the rosters league wide depending on the year. Coaching and management is even more lopsided with 28 out of 30 NHL coaches being Canadian in a recent year. Many elite development programs in the US and Europe are all heavily based on Canadian models. In short, the game remains heavily Canadian in character no matter where the arenas are built.
Players on Canadian teams are under immense media pressure relative to players on most American teams and there is a different tolerance for not being winners in Canada both due to the passionate love of the game and the character of the country. Changes in the league in recent decades means we will simply never return to the dynasty hockey of the past which would seem to affect the perception of Canadian success disproportionately because so many great Canadian teams had such long runs at the top in the past.