Montreal Canadiens

The Canadiens Aren’t Chasing Last Year. They’re Building on It

Montreal’s challenge isn’t winning the Cup. It’s proving last year’s Eastern Conference Final run was the start of something bigger.

by
Old Prof
September 19, 2026

After making it to the Eastern Conference Final last season, it’s pretty easy to look at the Montreal Canadiens and say, “Well, now they have to win the Stanley Cup.” Perhaps, but also perhaps not.

Once you’ve gone that far, nobody wants to hear about taking a step backward. Fans don’t want to lose in the first round and call it progress. But I think there’s another way to look at this Montreal team. The big question isn’t really whether the Canadiens win the Cup this year. It’s whether last year’s run was the beginning of something or just one really good spring.

That’s a pretty important difference.

Last Season, the Canadiens Caught the NHL by Surprise. Not This Season.

This has happened before in hockey. A young team catches everybody by surprise, goes on a great playoff run and suddenly everybody expects the same thing the next year. Then things don’t quite go that way, and people start wondering what happened.

Montreal doesn’t have to fall into that trap. The Canadiens don’t have to rush this thing just because they got further than anybody expected last year. The bigger job now is to become one of those teams that everybody expects to see in the playoffs every spring. A team nobody really wants to play. A team that people look at in October and believe they’re going to be around when this thing gets serious.

And the funny thing is, Montreal already has a lot of the pieces to do exactly that. They’re still the youngest team in the NHL. Think about that for a minute. They went all the way to the conference final, and they’re still getting better simply because so many of their important players are young.

The Canadiens Have a Great Coach in Martin St. Louis

Martin St. Louis deserves plenty of credit for that. He’s helping these young players learn NHL hockey without putting too much pressure on them. And the Canadiens’ salary-cap situation gives the front office some room to keep adding pieces around them.

Then there’s this little stat that I really like. Nick Suzuki has increased his point total every season of his NHL career. Cole Caufield has increased his goal total every season of his NHL career. That’s not a prediction. That’s what they’ve actually done.

And that’s what makes Montreal so interesting. This isn’t an old team that suddenly found one last bit of magic. No group of veterans is desperately trying to squeeze one more run out of a closing window. The Canadiens have a young core that’s already good enough to make a deep playoff run — and those players haven’t reached their ceilings yet.

Do the Canadiens Belong in the Postseason Conversation?

So maybe the measuring stick for Montreal this season shouldn’t be, “Did they win the Stanley Cup?” Maybe it’s a little simpler. Did they look like they belong in this conversation again?

If Suzuki, Caufield and the rest of this young group keep getting better, then last year’s playoff run starts to look a lot less like a surprise. It starts looking like the first chapter of a longer book.