{"id":611041,"date":"2026-04-17T21:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T21:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/611041\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T21:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T21:43:08","slug":"montreal-is-giddy-at-the-prospect-of-a-canadiens-championship-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/611041\/","title":{"rendered":"Montreal is giddy at the prospect of a Canadiens championship run"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A season-long scoring tear catapulted Cole Caufield (13) to second in the NHL in goals with 51, the most by a Canadiens player since 1990.Christopher Katsarov\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Most years, Montreal talk radio crackles with foreboding as playoff hockey approaches. <\/p>\n

Which Canadiens choke artist will break our hearts this year, callers demand. Who lobotomized our general manager and kidnapped the guts of our backup goalie?<\/p>\n

Not any more, not in the charmed spring of 2026, a season when nos glorieux can do no wrong and the dark nights of the fan\u2019s soul are floodlit by right winger Cole Caufield\u2019s 1,000-watt smile.<\/p>\n

The French-language 98.5 FM positively chimes with goodwill when the Habs come up for discussion. Midnight call-in host Louis-Philippe Guy recently asked a man which was more impressive, Caufield\u2019s 50-goal season or centre Nick Suzuki\u2019s 100 points. <\/p>\n

\u201cBoth!\u201d came the reply, with more enthusiasm than logic. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd how would you rate this season for the team?\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cHats off!\u201d<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s Canadiens have achieved what amounts to a minor medical miracle: They have cured the angst of the proverbial Fran\u00e7ois from Terrebonne.<\/p>\n

A series-by-series Stanley Cup playoff preview<\/a><\/p>\n

Such is the euphoria surrounding the squad that even grizzled pundits coo over their exploits like 19th-century art critics at a salon. \u201cA fine young team,\u201d declared the Montreal Gazette\u2019s Jack Todd while predicting a first-round victory. \u201cBeautiful \u2026 magnificent,\u201d exulted Jean-Charles Lajoie in Le Journal de Montr\u00e9al, predicting a Stanley Cup final appearance. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just regular season success that has earned these Habs the devotion-bordering-on-mania that now greets them at every turn, although 48 wins and 106 points are nice. <\/p>\n

Just as important is the team\u2019s youthful \u00e9lan. A more likeable bunch of lads is hard to find in the NHL. At 26, Suzuki is the elder statesman among Montreal\u2019s young stars, and even he looks more like a bashful schoolboy than the tireless two-way centre and veteran captain he is. <\/p>\n

Defenceman Lane Hutson appears to be 22 going on 12, but can drop a shoulder and thread a pass more deftly than all but the most bloody-minded playmakers. <\/p>\n

Ivan \u201cDemigod\u201d Demidov, the 20-year-old Russian wunderkind with feathery hands and Kandinsky\u2019s imagination, could be Hutson\u2019s kid brother. <\/p>\n

Caufield has debutante\u2019s eyelashes that flutter as quickly as the release of his wrist shot. <\/p>\n

This is a boy band as much as a hockey team, with the giddy fans to match. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Shifty defenceman Lane Hutson, seen advancing the puck against the Tampa Bay Lightning on April 9, dazzled the Bell Centre faithful throughout his second season.Christopher Katsarov\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Its Svengali, its Brian Epstein, is Kent Hughes, the former player agent hired as Canadiens GM in 2022. He built this roster cannily through the draft, selecting players (including the 5-foot-9 Hutson) deemed \u201cundersized\u201d by other front offices, and with clever trades such as the one that acquired workhorse defenceman (and fellow product of Montreal\u2019s West Island suburbs) Mike Matheson. <\/p>\n

The master stroke of Hughes\u2019s tenure may prove to be the hiring of Martin St. Louis as head coach. The Hall of Fame forward had no professional coaching experience, so it was a gamble. But his fit has been uncanny. <\/p>\n

Not only is St. Louis a francophone from the Montreal area who can serve as the team\u2019s spokesperson to the French-language media, he was himself an undersized and overlooked player who went undrafted before blossoming into a 1,000-point scorer with a Stanley Cup to his name. That pedigree has made him a perfect mentor to a team of scrappy, creative little players, especially Caufield, who credits St. Louis with teaching him to be a marksman. <\/p>\n

The city\u2019s love affair with these Habs reached a delirious peak the night Caufield netted his 50th goal.<\/p>\n

The feat really means something in Montreal, where Maurice Richard became the first NHL player to pull it off, where Guy Lafleur managed it an astounding six consecutive times and where no one had cleared the bar since the last era when the team was seriously challenging for the Cup in the early nineties. Caufield reaching the milestone evoked the glory days of a franchise that was so rich in them for so long, but has now been starving for 30 years. <\/p>\n

\u201cDe Maurice, \u00e0 Boom Boom, \u00e0 Guy, \u00e0 Steve, \u00e0 Pierre, \u00e0 St\u00e9phane, \u00e0 Cole: le flambeau est pass\u00e9,\u201d cried broadcaster Pierre Houde. The torch had been passed. <\/p>\n

Opinion: McDavid\u2019s legacy under the microscope as Oilers renew Cup quest<\/a><\/p>\n

In a way, Caufield\u2019s pursuit of 50 overshadowed remarkable seasons from up and down the bench that could see various Canadiens take home the Jack Adams Award and Norris and Selke trophies for best coach (St. Louis), defender (Hutson) and two-way forward (Suzuki).<\/p>\n

The fact that these potential award-winners are so young and signed to long-term contracts helped mellow out and deepen the good vibes of this season. Most fans feel the team has a five-year window of contention (at least), while it continues to add talent from the farm system. <\/p>\n

Jacob Fowler, the 21-year-old backup goalie, reminds some observers of Habs legend Carey Price \u2013 including Price himself. The rookie bounced between the big club and the minor-league Laval Rocket this season. <\/p>\n

When recent first-round draft pick Michael Hage informed the club he would be playing another season at the University of Michigan instead of making the leap to the NHL, the response in the press amounted to an annoyed shrug, not the five-alarm fire such news might have once provoked in a hope-starved market. <\/p>\n

Montreal has time and endless upside on its hands. Rarely has the fan base been in such a generous mood \u2013 so much so that the implosion of the Toronto Maple Leafs has generated relatively little schadenfreude down the 401. <\/p>\n

The Habs\u2019 cup runneth over. If the average Canadiens fan was asked which prospect looked sweeter, the team\u2019s imminent playoff run or the years to come, they might echo that caller to 98.5 FM, cross-eyed with excitement, and blurt \u201cBoth!\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A season-long scoring tear catapulted Cole Caufield (13) to second in the NHL…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,2338,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":{"0":"post-611041","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-ca","15":"tag-canada","16":"tag-canada-news","17":"tag-canada-sports","18":"tag-canada-sports-news","19":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","20":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","21":"tag-canadian-news","22":"tag-economy","23":"tag-education","24":"tag-environment","25":"tag-federal-government","26":"tag-foreign-news","27":"tag-globe-and-mail","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","29":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","30":"tag-government","31":"tag-life-news","32":"tag-lifestyle","33":"tag-local-news","34":"tag-manitoba","35":"tag-montreal","36":"tag-national-news","37":"tag-new-brunswick","38":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","39":"tag-northwest-territories","40":"tag-nova-scotia","41":"tag-nunavut","42":"tag-ontario","43":"tag-pei","44":"tag-photos","45":"tag-political-news","46":"tag-political-opinion","47":"tag-politics","48":"tag-politics-news","49":"tag-quebec","50":"tag-sports-news","51":"tag-technology","52":"tag-travel","53":"tag-trudeau","54":"tag-us-news","55":"tag-world-news","56":"tag-yukon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}