B.C. may have the strangest history in this regard in all of Canada, if only for that nearly 20-year stretch where hardly a player from the province played a game in the NHL.

Part of the reason comes back to population. The province had under 700,000 residents into the 1930s, and didn't grow to more than one million until the '50s. B.C.'s population experienced 30+ per cent increases in each decade between the Second World War and the 1980s, and players born in the boomers period would have hit the NHL about the time the league expanded from the Original Six and the Canucks entered.

Another big reason for such little B.C. representation in those years was other rival leagues like the WHL and PCHL, which both had Vancouver and Victoria teams that scooped up a lot of the local talent. (My grandfather, for example, played in the PCHL in the mid-'40s — although he was born in Saskatoon and, as a result, would have been more heavily scouted by NHL teams.)

Unlike Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where the major cities are cold enough that outdoor rinks freeze for months in a row, much of B.C.'s population is in cities — Vancouver and Victoria, mainly — where artificial ice is needed, and that will always stunt the game a bit at the grassroots level. There are 35 NHLers born in B.C. in the league this season, eight of which are listed as born in Vancouver (with several others from the suburbs).

The most well-known B.C.-born players include Joe Sakic, Paul Kariya, Steve Yzerman (who grew up mostly in Ottawa), Mark Recchi (from Kamloops), Cliff Ronning, Glenn Anderson, Ray Ferraro, Doug Bodger, the Courtnall brothers, Ryan Walter, Rob Niedermayer, Cam Neely, Greg Adams, Andy Moog, Brendan Morrison, Adam Deadmarsh, John Ferguson, Shawn Horcoff, Scott Hannan, Willie Mitchell, Eric Brewer and Darren McCarty.

I've got one more Canadian group to cover off and then I'll be onto the U.S. states and a few European countries. Suggestions, as always, are welcome.