The Montreal Canadiens were supposed to be here.
Down three games to one against the vaunted Toronto Maple Leafs, even the most unwavering of Habs faithful had packed it in. Their team had been embarrassed on home ice in back-to-back games, at times failing to execute even the most basic of plays. Passes bobbled, shots sputtered, heads hung.
I numbered among those faithful, and in conversations with my unrelentingly pessimistic father – a man spoiled with perennial Cup runs throughout his childhood – we had begun the taxing emotional labour of scouting replacement general managers and trade destinations for our aging veterans.
This state of affairs was disappointing, but hardly surprising. The regular season was a slog for the bleu, blanc et rouge. Losses outnumbered wins. An explosive start out of the gate faded quickly. The coach was fired in a desperate bid to energize the team. The replacement fared even worse. A COVID outbreak stopped play for a full week. The compressed schedule to make up for lost time took its toll. A playoff berth that once seemed assured was in peril down the stretch. The Habs held on, but only just.
To lose in the first round to the hated Leafs – a franchise that epitomizes beige corporate Canada with all its attendant focus-grouping – was simply one more injustice for Habs fans to suffer in a season full of them.
The Habs were on life support.
To the untrained eye, the 27 years between June 1993 - the last time the Canadiens played in the Stanley Cup Finals – and the present seem uneventful when measured against the years preceding. A franchise that prides itself on success (24 Stanley Cups - trailing only the New York Yankees in terms of professional sports championships) had languished in mediocrity.
But upon closer inspection, those 27 years were rife with intrigue. Namely:
The two-time Cup winning goalie Patrick Roy demanding a trade after getting hung out to dry in an 11-1 shellacking against the Detroit Red Wings. Roy would go on to win two more Cups with his new team (the Colorado Avalanche) while the Habs limped through the ensuing seasons.
Team captain Saku Koivu diagnosed with cancer (discovered by the team doctor, a legend in his own right) in the prime of his career, taking a nearly season-long sabbatical only to return in top form.
A miraculous run to the Conference Finals on the back of otherworldly goaltending by Jaroslav Halak – only for Halak to be dealt in the offseason to make room for the unproven Carey Price, a highly-touted “thoroughbred” of a goalie who had yet to realize his potential.
And those are just the headlines. Colourful vignettes abound. There was the unceremonious mid game trade of playoff hero Mike Cammalleri – told he could purchase his jersey (market value: purportedly $1,250) off the team (retail value: north of two billion dollars) when he asked to keep it as a parting gift. There was the Russian brothers Alexei and Andrei Kostitsyn - who may or may not have been jettisoned for ties to the local mafia. At one point, our GM hid behind a potted plant to avoid questions from the media. It was a good bit.
The on-ice product often failed to match the off-ice drama. But there were flashes. In recent history, the Habs have shown a knack – unique amongst hockey teams and perhaps amongst all teams in professional sports – for rising to the occasion when you least expect them. Over the past twelve years, there have been 24 playoff series in which a team had less than a 25% chance of victory according to the folks over at The Athletic. Teams outside of Montreal have gone 2-18 with those odds. The Canadiens have gone 4-0.
Prior to this year’s incarnation, the franchise’s high-water mark from the start of the Clinton administration onward came in 2014, when they stunned the arch-nemesis Boston Bruins in a second-round classic. The Bruins were the NHL’s best regular-season team and had come within two wins of a Stanley Cup championship the year before. The aforementioned Athletic model gave them a 79% chance of victory.
Mike Weaver played a pivotal role for those Canadiens. At 5’10”, Weaver was among the smallest defenseman in the NHL, and had been acquired at the trade deadline for a fifth-round pick (or, to hear Weaver tell it, “a bag and a half of pucks”). Yet Weaver, like those Canadiens, exceeded middling expectations. He became a cult hero for Habs fans, personifying fearlessness as he blocked bruising slap shot after bruising slap shot.
Weaver, who now coaches hockey in Toronto, and I caught up this past week to discuss what it meant to play for the Habs that year and the parallels he sees between now and 2014.
“We were up against the big behemoth Chara and the Boston Bruins, and we were trying to prove that their size was nothing. We beat them in Game Seven in their building – that was the best part about it. And it was almost like that was our Stanley Cup, even though we advanced past that point.”
Weaver remembers the energy of the city during that playoff run, and how the Canadiens’ success crept into every interaction he had with Montréalais.
“I remember getting pulled over on the drive to one of the playoff games after I’d taken a wrong left turn. Sitting in the car in with (Thomas) Vanek, both of us in our suits, joking around with the policeman about how we were going to be late for the game without mentioning who we were. We won, and I told the reporters in the locker room about the ticket. Sure enough, we heard that cop got harassed in the precinct that night. That ticket got ripped up.”
Only two players remain from that team: Carey Price and veteran winger Brendan Gallagher. Gallagher was in his second year when he played with Weaver, but Weaver said it was apparent from that age that he was the kind of player who would lead by example.
“You look at Gallagher, and you see a guy with scars and blood and cuts, and that’s the difference between a winner and a…trying-not-to-loser. Guys like Perry, Gallagher, Staal – they calm everyone down. Their defence has gotten better, and Carey is no longer carrying the team. Now they have a team that doesn’t have to rely on a goalie.”
More than anything, Weaver vividly remembers the sense of playing for something bigger in his time with the Canadiens – of an obligation to carry the torch and do right by the team’s legacy.
“The first time I was on the ice, I got scored on. I felt the weight of all those Stanley Cups. You don’t realize how big it is to play in a storied hockey city for a franchise like Montreal.”
The Habs did not lose Game Five against Toronto, nor did they lose Games Six or Seven. They did not lose any games against the Winnipeg Jets, and they lost only two to the heavily favoured Vegas Golden Knights. While their fans conspired for the future, these Habs had plans for the present.
Rooting for a sports team is an exercise in collective delusion, in talking yourself and your fellow fans into the possibility that this could be our year, at last. It rarely pans out that way. The top-shelf prospect struggles to adjust to the speed and physicality of the big leagues. The aging defenseman has lost a step. The goalie – once a world-beater – doesn’t have it anymore.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you go experience this together—that we use sports as an opportunity to deepen our connections with those we care about. We tell ourselves stories about how a season could play out, and then ride those stories as long as we can, editing along the way. Decisions get scrutinized and placed within narratives. Minor plays take on outsized significance. A timely shot block speaks to the team’s heart, an errant pass to your rival’s ineptitude. Anything for a good story.
A good story is exactly what these Habs have told, at least up until now. They face long odds (below that fated 25% mark) in the Stanley Cup Finals against the defending champion Tampa Bay Lightning, a juggernaut of a hockey team replete with top-end talent. But the players, the management, and the fans are not acting like underdogs. This is the storied Montreal Canadiens, after all.
And the Montreal Canadiens are supposed to be here.