The Montreal Canadiens' rebuild took a major step this year. After a couple of seasons at the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings, they made the playoffs.
How did the Canadiens even get to this point, though, and why were they forced to go into a full-fledged rebuild in the first place?
For years and years, the Montreal Canadiens were a team without any direction.
When Marc Bergevin took over the Canadiens in 2012, he inherited a multitude of promising young players, including Carey Price, P.K. Subban and Max Pacioretty.
However, Bergevin and the organization's failure to draft high-level talent, develop prospects, and build a strong supporting cast of players prevented them from surrounding these three players with a championship-level roster.
Sure, the Canadiens were a perennial playoff team, but they lacked the offensive depth to emerge as a Stanley Cup contender.
When Price began to struggle with injuries and the core was in dire need of a rebuild, Bergevin opted to make moves simply to stay afloat as opposed to truly picking a direction to go in.
In 2021 though, the Canadiens, on the back of Price, made a miraculous run to the Stanley Cup Final, where they ultimately lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning in five games.
Bergevin doubled down after the team’s impressive playoff run signing veteran players the likes of David Savard and Mike Hoffman despite the clear fact that this team was not in a place to compete for a Stanley Cup, withstanding what transpired in the 2021 NHL Playoffs.
That sentiment was deemed to be true. The Canadiens went through one of their worst starts in franchise history, with the losses of Price and captain Shea Weber due to their respective injuries, too much to overcome.
Everything reached a boiling point when Canadiens owner Geoff Molson decided to fire Bergevin in November of 2021 after nearly a decade spent with the organization.
It was time for the Habs to have a progressive thinker running the show in Montreal, which was why Molson went out and hired Jeff Gorton to be the team’s President of Hockey Operations.
Gorton is a man who thinks outside the box. One of his first moves was to appoint Kent Hughes as general manager, someone who was an agent at the time with no NHL management experience.
It might have seemed like an odd move, but it’s that outside-of-the-box kind of thinking the Canadiens organization was in desperate need of.
The duo of Gorton and Hughes was seen as unique. They quickly made clear that the Habs would go into a rebuild, a phrase unheard of to the city of Montreal since the fanbase was accustomed to the team competing by whatever means necessary.
They took swift action, firing head coach Dominique Ducharme just a few weeks into the new regime.
Their replacement for Ducharme was none other than legendary forward Martin St. Louis.
St. Louis’s NHL resume was well documented to everybody, but his only coaching experience came in Connecticut’s Mid Fairfield Youth Hockey Association, where he coached his three sons.
He went from coaching youth hockey to taking over a rebuilding Canadiens team that needed a new face behind the bench to lead them.
Under St. Louis, the Habs saw an instant improvement to close out the 2021-22 campaign, especially from the two young pillars of the franchise, Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield.
Suzuki and Caufield always had the potential to be special and it was St. Louis who was able to unlock that full potential.
“You could see that Cole was going to be a goal-scorer and Suzuki was going to be a solid two-way player,” former Canadiens forward Phillip Danault said. “The desire from them, the compete level they had already from that age was outstanding. They pay attention to details as well, so for me it was really impressive to see them grow.”
It seemed as if Gorton and Hughes’ outside-of-the-box thinking was turning into results.
The Canadiens still finished with the worst record in the NHL and landed the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 NHL Draft.
Their decision was simple or at least almost everybody thought so, pick Shane Wright, the explosive center from Canada who was predicted to be the surefire No. 1 pick for years.
Once again, though, Gorton and Hughes defied all logic and shocked the world by picking a lengthy, tall left-winger by the name of Juraj Slafkovsky, who really only emerged as a top prospect in the months leading up to the draft.
In the second round of that same draft, the Canadiens decided to take a flyer on Lane Hutson, a speedy and explosive defenseman who dropped out of the first round due to concerns about his 5-foot-9 frame but had an extraordinary amount of potential.
Over the next two seasons, the Canadiens took a patient approach. It involved making very few major trades and signings while allowing their young core of players to develop.
The Habs missed the playoffs over those next two seasons, but between the improvements of the team's young players and subtle roster additions, the rebuild was right on track.
Even with all of the losses that surrounded the franchise over those couple of years, the culture remained surprisingly strong and upbeat.
It was a culture built under the tutelage of Gorton, Hughes, and St. Louis as well as a united group of players.
“You could tell there was a lot of good talent in the organization,” 2022 trade acquisition Mike Matheson said. “We had a good idea that it wasn’t going to happen by chance, that we were going to get out of the space that we were in. We knew we had to keep working and really push the envelope to make it happen. We really just put it all out there…
“I think we had a really tight-knit group where I feel like everybody on the team really loved hockey and loved playing hockey and working hard. That, as a basis point, is really important for a team to cover ground and make things happen. And so I feel like that's kind of where it began.”
Entering the 2024-25 season, there weren’t necessarily expectations, but there was certainly excitement. Suzuki and Caufield were emerging into stars of their own, while Slafkovsky continued to show promise among other young players on the roster.
Hutson was also set to play in his first NHL season after two years at Boston University, where he established himself as one of the most exhilarating prospects.
Even with all the excitement, the Canadiens started the season flat and there were no signs of improvement as a group.
To start the month of December the Canadiens were 31st in the overall league standings with little hope let alone even a thought about making playoffs.
However, the team continued to believe in themselves and it started with St. Louis, which inspired all of his players.
“I think his belief in us is the biggest thing that drove us,” Matheson said of St. Louis. “He never stopped believing in us. Even when there were moments when guys in the locker room thought it was too tall of a mountain to climb, he kept injecting that belief back into us. Obviously, his knowledge of the game is incredible, but I feel like that piece is really important.”
The Habs somehow climbed their way from the bottom pits of the standings back into the playoff picture after flipping the script in December and carrying that strong play into January and February.
However, with the playoff race in the Eastern Conference extremely tight, there were still doubts that the Canadiens could make the playoffs.
Leading up to the March 7 NHL Trade Deadline, Gorton and Hughes were planning on trading a couple of their veteran players in the hopes of acquiring more draft picks and young assets.
That’s when Suzuki, the Canadiens’ youngest captain in franchise history, stepped in. Suzuki urged management not to take a selling approach at the deadline.
“Go win games,” the management group told Suzuki after his request.
Not only did the Canadiens start winning games leading up to the trade deadline, but Suzuki elevated his play and the Habs did not trade any of their veteran players.
This story embodies who Suzuki is as a leader.
“He’s the guy that grabs the group and says ‘follow me, I’ll lead,’” Emil Heineman said about Suzuki. “He comes up so clutch and shows us what he can bring. He’s a big deal for our team and a big reason why we had success this year.”
In the final weeks of the season, every game was a must-win for the Habs in their pursuit of a playoff spot.
Something magical began to happen. No matter how many goals the Canadiens were down by on any given night, they always seemed to find a way to come back in the most magical fashion that could only be written in a fairy tale.
The Canadians were truly battle-tested. All of the pain and struggles they had to endure over the past couple of years prepared them for this very moment where they needed to dig deep and believe.
“I think we just never really gave up, and always felt like, if we found our game, we could compete with anybody in the league,” Matheson said.
It took until the very last game of the regular season for the Canadiens to clinch the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference, but they overcame all odds and marched their way into the post-season with more confidence than ever.
The Canadiens may have lost in five games in the first round of the playoffs against the Washington Capitals, but the Canadiens showed heart and resilience and proved that they belonged.
By making the playoffs, the Canadiens took a monumental step in their rebuild.
“I think we had another great learning experience in the playoffs, of seeing what playoff hockey is like and what it takes to compete and win in the playoffs,” Matheson said.
The Canadiens not only impressed the people of Montreal, but also caught the attention of many around the NHL.
“I think they have so many young guys and at some point you have to get on the other side of the edge, and they did this year,” Danault said. “Next year is going to be even harder, there’s going to be more pressure, but they showed some character and they came a long way to make the playoffs. They were impressive to see and exciting for the fans to see the young guys perform.”
For the Canadiens’ young core, it was a year of triumph. Suzuki recorded a career-high of 89 points, Caufield became a 30-goal scorer for the first time in his career, and Hutson set a new franchise record for points by a rookie defenseman with 66 points, as he’s the favorite to win the Calder Trophy.
Slafkovsky had another promising season to build on, and 19-year-old Russian phenom Ivan Demidov came in for the Habs at the end of the season, showing glimpses of a superstar in the making.
Now that the Canadiens have taken this step of making the playoffs, expectations for this core are officially higher.
The bar has been set and they’ll need to exceed the bar again without losing their identity that got them there in the process.
“I think we just need to continue building,” Matheson emphasized. “I think if we kind of get all stressed out over wins and losses and think we're going to be a total failure if we don't win a bunch of games, I think we'll get caught in the pressure instead of just focusing on on the process of what it takes to be a winning team and what sorts of ingredients it takes to have that happen.”
Losing their identity shouldn’t be a problem because of the strong foundation that has already been set.
Most importantly, this group of players truly embrace wearing the Habs sweater and everything that comes with being a Montreal Canadian.
It’s what this fan base has been waiting for all of these years, and now they have just that.
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