Jack Todd: These Canadiens trying to write new page in team's glorious history

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The incomparable custom of the Montreal Canadiens is an element burden and half inspiration.Typically it’s arduous to inform which is the higher half.

You already know you’re an iconic franchise when a youngsters’s story about your hockey sweater is in itself iconic. Each Canadiens fan learns it from the second she will get her first José Theodore tuque: The 24 Stanley Cups. The Corridor of Famers. The good coaches. Three separate dynasties, these of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, when most groups can be hard-put to assert one.

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The Rocket. The Pocket Rocket. Le Gros Invoice. Increase-Increase. The Roadrunner. The Flower. Massive Hen. St. Patrick.

The Discussion board, and the Discussion board ghosts. The Miracle Cups: 1971, 1986, 1993. Dick Irvin Sr., Toe Blake, Scotty Bowman. Frank Selke and Sam Pollock.

With the start of every new season it’s there, a vibrant presence even with a historical past that reaches again to Newsy Lalonde and Howie Morenz, to Georges Vézina, George Hainsworth.

Not solely does Montreal have extra star gamers, extra dynasties and extra Stanley Cups than another franchise within the NHL, in addition they have extra names, in two languages: le Membership de hockey Canadien, the Canadiens, the Habs, le tricolore, les Glorieux, le bleu-blanc-rouge, la Sainte-Flanelle.

From the closing of the Discussion board in 1996 to the centennial celebrations throughout the 2009-2010 season, the group pretty wallowed in its superb historical past, maybe as a distraction from an inglorious current. It got here to look that the torch, when it was handed, weighed greater than the more and more high-tech scoreboards on the Bell Centre.

I used to be reminded of the load of that custom this week when hockey author Ken Campbell, in a collection for the Hockey Information, posted his rating of every staff’s Mount Rushmore of 4 nice gamers with the Edmonton Oilers rating first and the Pittsburgh Penguins second.

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When Campbell went with Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri and Connor McDavid, I responded: Rocket Richard, Jean Béliveau, Man Lafleur, Doug Harvey. However I had not listened to Campbell’s rationalization of his standards — a kind of iconic gents needed to be a present participant.

A lot as we admire what the Canadiens are constructing at this time, no smart fan can argue that any participant on the ice this season is up there with McDavid, or with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin in Pittsburgh.

That didn’t cease followers from weighing in en masse with lists of nice Canadiens gamers from seasons previous. When the title Sprague Cleghorn popped up, I opted out.

The Habs, nevertheless, have all of it relating to sheer depth. “The Canadiens,” Campbell stated, “have had so many iconic gamers over time that their fourth and fifth iterations of Mount Rushmore can be excessive on this listing.”

By taking a participant who’s technically on the present roster, Campbell ranked the Canadiens third with Rocket Richard, Jean Béliveau, Man Lafleur and Carey Value. However Value, who by no means received a Stanley Cup, ranks no higher than third on Montreal’s personal goaltending depth chart, after Patrick Roy and Ken Dryden.

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That’s what life is like with this franchise. Each Canadiens staff operates within the shadow of what’s now 115 years of custom. Correctly, present administration has edged away from the fixed drumbeat of the previous. The rebuild is all about profitable now — or not less than within the close to future.

That custom can drag you down or elevate you up. On stability, it nonetheless operates within the staff’s favour, particularly towards Unique Six rivals like Boston and Toronto. How was it that the Canadiens had been capable of overcome a 3-0 deficit towards what was clearly a extra proficient Maple Leafs staff within the 2021 playoffs?

Effectively, the Canadiens have received 10 Stanley Cups since 1967, whereas the Leafs haven’t made it to a single ultimate over that very same span. A long time of profitable conditioned Montreal followers to demand extra; a long time of dropping have led Toronto followers to anticipate much less. Each groups fulfilled their expectations.

And what of the fast expectations in Montreal?

Towards Ottawa Tuesday evening, Kirby Dach was one of the best participant on the ice. He appeared huge, quick and harmful. Wholesome, Dach makes this staff higher all by himself. Paired with Patrik Laine (assuming Laine is certainly utterly wholesome and able to go by Christmas) Dach is a kind of gamers who transfer the needle, elevating expectations.

So is Laine, clearly, and Lane Hutson, though it’s lots to anticipate a 165-pound rookie defenceman to repair your ailing energy play by his lonesome.

There’s extra. Ivan Demidov, a season away, was named the KHL’s rookie of the month. With Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky, Alex Newhook, Kaiden Guhle, Joshua Roy, Owen Beck, Oliver Kapanen and Arber Xhekaj to guard all of them, the Canadiens have one thing happening within the current.

So what’s our prophecy? “Within the combine” is a meaningless phrase, when 20 to 25 groups are within the post-season hunt yearly. It’s a cop-out, so let’s go together with an actual prediction:

The Canadiens are going to make the playoffs this season.

Subsequent season, it’s time to begin homing in on that elusive twenty fifth Stanley Cup.

jacktodd46@yahoo.com

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