The Montreal Canadiens don’t need to spend this season proving last year was a fluke. They need to show it was the start of something bigger.
That’s the cleaner way to look at a team that reached the Eastern Conference Final last season. Sure, once a club gets that far, the natural temptation is to raise the bar all the way to the Stanley Cup.
But that can flatten the real story. The more useful question is whether Montreal’s run was a one-off spring surge or the opening stretch of a team that’s going to be part of the NHL’s serious spring conversations for a while.
That distinction matters.
This is the kind of spot where young teams can get misread. A group jumps ahead of schedule, shocks people in the playoffs, and suddenly the outside world treats the next season like an automatic continuation.
When that doesn’t happen, the narrative turns fast. But Montreal doesn’t need to be trapped by that expectation.
The Canadiens’ bigger task is to keep becoming the kind of team opponents circle on the schedule, the kind that feels established in October and dangerous when the games tighten up later.
And the encouraging part for Montreal is that the foundation is already there. The Canadiens are still the youngest team in the NHL, which makes their climb even more intriguing. They made it to the conference final, and they’re still in a stage where so many of their key players are improving simply because of where they are in their careers.
Martin St. Louis deserves a lot of the credit for that. He’s guiding a young group through the NHL without loading it down with too much pressure, and the Canadiens’ salary-cap situation gives the front office some flexibility to keep building around them.
The individual growth is there too, and it’s hard not to notice. 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 projection or wishful thinking - that’s what they’ve already done.
That’s why Montreal feels different from the usual team that catches fire for a single postseason and then fades back into the pack. This isn’t an aging roster trying to squeeze one last run out of a shrinking window. The Canadiens already have a young core good enough to make a deep playoff push, and there’s still more room for that core to grow.
So maybe the right standard for this season isn’t whether Montreal wins the Stanley Cup. Maybe it’s something simpler: do the Canadiens look like they belong in the postseason conversation again?
If Suzuki, Caufield and the rest of that group keep moving forward, last year’s playoff run stops looking like a surprise. It starts looking like the first chapter.
In Other News...
Florian Xhekaj Just Forced A Bigger Canadiens Roster Debate
Florian Xhekaj has spent training camp making himself harder to ignore, and not just because of the name on the back of the sweater. He has been skating with established players, showing the kind of physical development that tends to catch a coachs eye in September, and the broader Canadiens picture only adds to the intrigue with his brother Arber having recently signed a one-year deal in the organization.
The latest reminder came in a preseason meeting with Toronto, where Xhekaj dropped the gloves and added another layer to an already interesting camp battle. For Montreal, it is the sort of development that can sharpen a roster conversation quickly: a young player pushing for attention, a team looking at its depth and identity, and a decision that gets tougher when the physical edge starts to show up in real games. [Read more 🡒]
Arber Xhekaj Created A Canadiens Issue Fans Didn't Expect
The Canadiens preseason doubleheader against the Maple Leafs produced plenty of the usual camp noise, but Arber Xhekaj found himself at the center of an unexpected off-ice discussion. While serving a penalty, he was seen in the box using a cell phone to watch his brother Florian Xhekajs fight in the other game, a quirky scene that quickly drew attention beyond the scoreboard and into the leagues rulebook.
Montreal fans already had reason to keep an eye on Florian, who has been pushing for a roster spot and turned in a solid outing with an assist, a blocked shot and plenty of physical play. Now the focus has shifted to what comes next for Arber, because the NHL bans cell phones on the bench and in the penalty box, making this less of a lighthearted family moment and more of a situation that could carry a penalty of its own. [Read more 🡒]
Canadiens Face New Lineup Concern After Practice Absences
The Canadiens had a different look at practice as Alexandre Carrier, Jake Evans and Lucas Condotta were not on the ice with the regular group. Josh Nadeau and Dillan Bentley were moved into Group A, while Laurent Dauphin joined Group B to help fill the gaps, a sign that the club was shuffling things around before its next preseason outing against the Ottawa Senators.
The absences have not been explained, so it is not clear whether this was simply maintenance or tied to what happened in the previous game. Evans is the name worth watching most closely after he left that contest early with an apparent injury, and with no official lineup announced yet, the Canadiens still have a little uncertainty hanging over how they will look when they return to game action. [Read more 🡒]