The Habs Are Back — And Montreal Has Never Been More Ready

A longtime hockey writer explains why the Canadiens' playoff run is igniting a city, a generation, and a century-old identity.

Brendan Kelly has spent more than 30 years covering Montreal from the inside — its culture, its language politics, and above all, its hockey team. The Montreal Gazette columnist and author of Habs Nation has watched the Canadiens through dynasty and drought alike. So, when he says this spring feels different, it's worth paying attention.

"I think there's more excitement now than there ever has been in my lifetime," Kelly says. "I mean, I think this is actually more exciting than the 1970s."

That's a bold claim — the '70s Canadiens won four straight Stanley Cups — but Kelly isn't talking about the team's résumé. He's talking about the fans.

"When you go to those viewing parties at the Bell Centre, when there's 21,000 people there who paid ten, twelve dollars to get in for a viewing party, they're all in their twenties," he says. "These people have never seen a good hockey team."

That generational gap may be the most important story of this Canadiens resurgence. The Canadiens' last championship was 1993 — longer ago than most of the current fan base can remember. For nearly three decades, the franchise wandered, and a large portion of younger fans inherited the mythology of the Canadiens without ever experiencing sustained success themselves.

Kelly traces the inflection point precisely: "The turning point was 1995, when they fired Serge Savard as general manager and soon after the new manager traded Patrick Roy in like the worst trade in the history of the Canadiens… and it's been 25 years of crap ever since."

The Long Game

When Geoff Molson brought in Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton in 2021, they committed to a full tear-down. The Canadiens finished dead last in 2021–22, drafting first overall and selecting Slovak winger Juraj Slafkovský. The strategy, painful as it was, has produced one of the youngest rosters in the league, and one of the most exciting.

What makes 2026 feel different is that, for the first time in decades, a new generation is seeing Canadiens hockey that feels real, sustainable, and worth believing in.

"They've got this incredible young team — they're the youngest team in the NHL," Kelly says, "and they've got this core of five or six young players who are going to be there forever."

He points to players like Lane Hutson, already breaking defensive records in just his second NHL season; Ivan Demidov, a likely future superstar in his first year; Cole Caufield, who scored 51 goals — a feat no Canadien had managed since Stéphane Richer in 1989-90; Nick Suzuki, who hit 100 points for the first time in 40 years (since Mats Naslund in 1985-86).

"And then on top of all of this, in the playoffs, we've discovered that the team has potentially the best goalie in hockey in Jakub Dobeš. The guy is playing like Ken Dryden or Patrick Roy," says Kelly.

The patience required to see it through — finishing last, drafting first, watching rivals compete for cups while Montreal rebuilt from the bottom — is rare in one of hockey's most scrutinized markets.

The fan reaction is as much about trajectory as it is about results.

CNBC valued the franchise at $3.4 billion in 2025, third in the NHL behind only Toronto and New York. And even through the lean years of the rebuild, the Bell Centre sold out all 41 home games during the 2024–25 season, leading the league in total attendance.

"The fans know that this team is going to be good for a very long time," Kelly says. "Management didn't even think this was gonna happen. And the fans know that chances are they've constructed a really good team."

The French Question

That construction has also been quietly attentive to something older and more complicated than analytics: the team's French-Canadian identity.

Kelly’s book — published in French as Le CH et Son Peuple in fall 2024 — argues that the Canadiens' greatest eras tracked almost exactly with how French the team was.

"They won 17 of their 24 cups between 1955 and 1995," he says, "and that also is the period when they were at their most French Canadian." The lineage runs through Rocket Richard, Jean Béliveau, Guy Lafleur, and Patrick Roy.

Today, Quebec produces fewer NHL players than it once did: a trend Kelly finds genuinely troubling — but the current front office has made a point of stocking the roster with francophone Quebecers even in supporting roles.

Players like Philippe Danault, Zachary Bolduc, and Alexandre Carrier may not be the stars of the team, but they matter in other ways.

"They're not the star players," Kelly acknowledges, "but the media's mainly French here, so it's incredibly useful for them to have Philippe Danault, or even Matheson or Villeneuve, who speak French, to show up on those shows."

When Bolduc and Danault each scored in Game 7 of the second round — the first time in 47 years that two Québécois players found the net in a playoff Game 7 — Kelly noted the milestone in the Globe and Mail.

The coach, too, matters in ways that go beyond tactics.

"The coach has to speak French, the general manager has to be able to speak French," Kelly says. "Geoff Molson, to his credit, he's a fluently bilingual English Montrealer himself. He understands the importance of all this."

And then there is the building itself. Kelly describes the Bell Centre as "the most exciting building in the NHL,” a view shared, he says, by the players who visit it.

"Every player that comes here loves playing at the Bell Centre. It's their favorite arena to play in because it's so exciting. You're a hockey player — this is the hockey mecca."

Whether a Stanley Cup follows this spring or arrives a few years hence, Kelly believes the foundation is real.

“Suddenly, you’ve got this exciting team.”

Stephanie Ricci contributed to this story.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com