Habs hype catching on: Montreal fans revelling in team's run - Canada News Beep

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The Moose owner Ashi Minhas says: ‘The Habs, with each passing win and each series, have increased business for sure. It’s just a festive atmosphere and welcomed after a miserable season for the local team’

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Published May 21, 2026 • 4 minute read

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Habs Ashi Minhas, super Montreal Canadians fan and owner of The Moose, enjoys the festive atmosphere with a Habs flag on the ceiling in Vancouver on May 21. Photo by NICK PROCAYLO /10111667AArticle content

To hear Ashi Minhas tell it, the Montreal Canadiens going on a playoff run is good for business in Vancouver’s downtown core.

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The owner of The Moose — a Nelson Street establishment that boasts of being the “best dive bar in Vancouver” on its website — also admits that he might be a tad biased when it comes to his beloved Habs.

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Montreal is one of four teams left standing in the NHL post-season, squaring off against the Carolina Hurricanes in a best-of-seven series for the right to face either the Colorado Avalanche or the Vegas Golden Knights in the Stanley Cup Final. A Canadian club hasn’t won Lord Stanley’s chalice since Patrick Roy led Montreal to the title in 1993.

“Business has been good on Habs game nights even though we aren’t a sports bar. Habs fans and friends know we always have the games on and it’s been very festive,” Minhas explained. “The Habs are my team, so the folks and the staff have no choice. We have had a Habs flag here for years. “I was lucky enough to be at the game in Montreal when Lane Hutson scored the overtime winner (against the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 3 of the first round). It was absolute pandemonium. I was in Montreal, too, watching at a bar for Game 5 in Buffalo, which the Habs won.

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“The World Cup hasn’t had much buzz yet here. The Habs, with each passing win and each series, have increased business for sure. It’s just a festive atmosphere and welcomed after a miserable season for the local team.”

Dublin Calling on Granville Street is another watering hole trying to become a go-to spot for Montreal supporters, after syncing up with a Habs Fans in Vancouver Facebook group.

The hockey club clearly has a bevy of backers in the Lower Mainland. You only need to look at how many people are wearing Canadiens garb in the Rogers Arena stands when Montreal is in town to face the Vancouver Canucks to realize that.

Those Canucks, who are in the midst of a rebuild after a last-place finish this season, joined the NHL in 1970, teaming with their Buffalo Sabres expansion cousins to bring the league to 14 teams. Original Six squads like the Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs had a 50-plus-year head start on winning over fans, and those allegiances have been bred into some families for generations.

“How far back does my fandom go? From the womb, brother,” said Michael Borason, 51, who, oddly enough, worked security for Canucks games at Rogers Arena for 30 years. “When someone asks you about one of your earliest memories, mine include going to bed with the Habs game — sometimes in French, sometimes in English — playing on the radio in my room. And when my dad was teaching me how to speak, he’d ask, ‘Who’s No. 29?’ I would tell him Ken Dryden. We would go through the whole roster. I was two and three years old.”

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Montreal Canadiens’ Juraj Slafkovsky celebrates with Cole Caufield after scoring against the Buffalo Sabres during second period of Game 3 of National Hockey League playoff series in Montreal, Sunday May 10, 2026. Photo by John Mahoney /Montreal Gazette

Mike Babins, 50, who owns Evergreen Cannabis in Kitsilano, says that he was wrapped in a Habs sweater right after he was born. His grandfather Peter started working at the Montreal Forum in 1924 selling chocolate bars and, according to Babins, the players considered him good luck to such a degree that he worked well past traditional retirement age.

“He was actually there every time we won at home and he’d be drinking out of the Cup with Maurice Richard,” Babins says.

Babins’ father Billy went on to work at The Forum as well.

Fast-forward to the present time and Mike’s family dog Nigel wears a Canadiens sweater on game days, and Mike has brought in a cannabis brand called ‘Bandwagon’, to his store, offering customers who aren’t Montreal fans a chance to sign on for this run.

“It’s in my blood,” Mike says of his support for the team.

Borason and Babins are both transplants from the Montreal area, and that is a recurring theme with Habs fans in the Lower Mainland. Joe Jarvandi, 54, who heads up North Vancouver’s City Colour Finishing painting company, also fits that description and maintains that hockey in Montreal just sits a little differently than other places.

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“They’re one of the oldest teams. They have the brand, they have the name and it just captures you,” he said. “You go to Montreal and it’s impossible that you don’t get that. It doesn’t matter where you are from. It gets you. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like a voodoo. You find yourself automatically becoming a Montreal Canadiens fan.

“You go to games in Vancouver and it’s all corporate. Nobody is talking about hockey. They’re talking about business. In Montreal, even the businessmen are talking about the game. It’s just magical.”

Fans at a Bell Centre viewing party celebrate a first period goal during game 7 between the Montreal Canadiens and the Buffalo Sabres in the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs Monday, May 18, 2026. The game was being played in Buffalo, New York. Photo by John Kenney /Montreal Gazette

Tom Mayenknecht, who covers sport business every weekend on Sportsnet 650 on The Sport Market show, compares this Habs team’s current success with the hype and hoopla that the Toronto Blue Jays’ created in the fall when they went to the World Series. According to Mayenknecht, Montreal checks a lot of the same boxes that Toronto did, with “history and tradition, style of play, name recognition of star players and personality of other core players.”

J.P. Wright, 59, a Vancouver-based managing partner with digital advertising company Creative Display Technologies, echoes those thoughts, saying this Montreal team is “just so likable.” His parents are both originally from Montreal, he grew up in Kingston, Ont., and all his first hockey experiences were centred around the Canadiens.

“They’re like a family,” he said. “It’s hard not to root for them. They’re young, they’re exciting. I love their captain (Nick Suzuki). They’ve got a Canadian captain and he plays the game the way it should be played.

“They’ve got a great mix. Nobody is really giving them a chance in this series, but I think otherwise.”

SEwen@postmedia.com

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