{"id":614965,"date":"2026-04-19T18:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T18:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/614965\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T18:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T18:38:11","slug":"canadiens-quest-to-bottle-lightning-a-chance-to-prove-contender-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/614965\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadiens’ quest to bottle Lightning a chance to prove contender status"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four days ago, I was asked by Martin Lemay on his excellent French-language podcast\u00a0Le Retour<\/a>\u00a0to identify areas in which the\u00a0Montreal Canadiens\u00a0are definitively better than the\u00a0Tampa Bay Lightning, and I responded, \u201cNone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because the thing about this matchup is that one team has created a brand so consistent that the greatest player in the world, Connor McDavid,\u00a0recently singled it out\u00a0as the gold standard everyone (including his Edmonton Oilers, who are hoping to reach a third consecutive Cup Final) is chasing, and the other team is the Canadiens.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re young, brash, full of energy and talent, and, as a result, they produced just as impressive a regular season as the Lightning did. Both teams finished with 106 points, and both emerged near the top of the NHL\u2019s most competitive division. They split four games in their season series, matching each other goal for goal and punch for punch, and the inference that they would be just as closely matched in a best-of-seven in the playoffs is anything but out of place if you\u2019re basing it purely on all of that.<\/p>\n

But as\u00a0Cole Caufield<\/a>\u00a0wisely said before he and the Canadiens departed for Tampa, \u201cWe haven\u2019t really done anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lightning, on the other hand, have done it all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We\u2019re talking about a team that played for three of the last five Cups and won two of them. They\u2019re backstopped by arguably the best goaltender of his generation in Andrei Vasilevskiy, propelled by a generational superstar in Nikita Kucherov, coached by a sure-fire future Hall of Famer in Jon Cooper, and dripping in winning culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll be up to the Canadiens to prove they can beat all that in games that matter much more than the ones they\u2019ve played against them to date.<\/p>\n

Martin St. Louis knows.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll give you facts: They\u2019re a veteran team that\u2019s been pretty much the standard the last seven-plus years, eight years, 10 years,\u201d he said on Thursday. \u201cThey\u2019re good. We\u2019re good, too. Those are facts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether we\u2019re favourites, underdogs? That\u2019s why we play the games, so we\u2019re not worried about this. We\u2019re going to go play the games.\u201d<\/p>\n

If at the end of them, the Canadiens are still standing, then we can start proclaiming they\u2019re better in certain areas.<\/p>\n

At least they were good enough to earn this opportunity. Especially offensively, where they were driven by Caufield becoming the organization\u2019s first 50-goal scorer in 36 years,\u00a0Nick Suzuki\u00a0becoming its first 100-point player since Mats Naslund in 1986, Juraj Slafkovsky emerging as its best power forward since John LeClair played hero in several games of the 1993 Cup run,\u00a0Lane Hutson\u00a0tying Larry Robinson for a franchise record for most assists by a defenceman in a single season (66), and\u00a0Ivan Demidov\u00a0pacing all NHL rookies with 62 points.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Canadiens also got here by riding their depth to fully clamp down defensively in the second half of the season, giving first-year goaltenders Jakub Dobes and Jacob Fowler the means to form one of the league\u2019s most formidable duos down the stretch.<\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s time to see if all that translates to immediate playoff success.<\/p>\n

Prior to late-season losses to the Canadiens, Cooper talked about how he had no doubt it would come for them in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said the Lightning built up their brand over years. He explained how it became so consistent and reliable, no matter who came in and out of their lineup and talked about how the seeds of something similar were being sown in Montreal.<\/p>\n

\u201cConsistent ownership, GM, coach, staff, I think that\u2019s a big part of it,\u201d Cooper said on March 31. \u201cOur leadership core\u2019s been primarily the same, and then you bring guys back (like Yanni Gourde) who have played here already, so that helps. I think we\u2019ve had the standard here for some time and we\u2019ve had success with it and we don\u2019t break it, and I think the players have come in well aware of what we do here and what has to be done and the standards that are held here, and guys that have been here hold them to it when I\u2019m not around. So I think that\u2019s been a big thing for us.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I\u2019m pretty sure you\u2019re going to see it across the hall there. Marty\u2019s been there for some time now\u2026 and he\u2019s growing up with these players. These players are growing up with him. Knowing Marty and having been with him and coached him and knowing his personality, he\u2019ll have a standard that is not going to be broken\u2026 and I think you\u2019ll see the same thing in Montreal in the coming years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two weeks out from a playoff series that seemed destined to materialize between the Canadiens and his team, Cooper wasn\u2019t about to suggest that timeline is rapidly advancing.<\/p>\n

And when he was asked again by reporters in Tampa on Friday about similarities between the rising Lightning of the mid-2010s and the current Canadiens, he was hesitant to lean too far into the comparison, saying, \u201cIt\u2019s hard for me to sit here and predict what\u2019s going to happen in Montreal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut do they have a great core? Yes,\u201d Cooper acknowledged. \u201cDo they have a great coach? Yes. In management, ownership top to the bottom, they\u2019ve got everything that\u2019s set up to succeed, and a whole bunch of young, talented players that are just coming up and finding themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, is the path there? It is. They just have to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why not now?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the question the Canadiens have been asking themselves in the lead-up to Sunday\u2019s Game 1, which gets underway at 5:45 p.m. ET on Sportsnet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe made it to the party. That\u2019s kind of the first thing is getting there,\u201d said Caufield. \u201cWe know the type of guys that they have over there, that have a lot of experience and know what they\u2019re doing, but we have belief in our guys that play the right way and do the right things, and I think those are the things that give us a chance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a seven-game series, and it\u2019s usually the best team wins. You\u2019re able to break teams down with energy, pace, physicality. I think those (Lightning) teams, they were good for a long time, and we\u2019ve been chasing those guys for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Canadiens have a chance to catch and pass them, and doing so would say much more about what kind of team they are than anything else they\u2019ve done to this point.<\/p>\n

They aren\u2019t definitively better than the Lightning in any category just yet, but their quest to change that over the next two weeks starts right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four days ago, I was asked by Martin Lemay on his excellent French-language podcast\u00a0Le Retour\u00a0to identify areas in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-614965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614965","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=614965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}