MONTREAL, QC. — Last season may have been the worst in the history of the Montréal Canadiens, but at least it brought first-overall pick Juraj Slafkovský to Centre Bell. Still, the particularly weak campaign for the all-time leaders in Stanley Cup wins wasn’t helped by the 2021 season taking the underdog Habs all the way to the Cup Finals.
A full rebuild has been needed in Montréal for several years now, but under Marc Bergevin, the team often struggled to patch glaring holes and was allowed to fall into obscurity. Now, with Kent Hughes as GM, there’s a renewed sense of optimism, with some savvy offseason moves to bring in the likes of Kirby Dach and Sean Monahan which were praised across the board.
These efforts for the GM embarking on his first full NHL campaign weren’t quite enough to improve the Habs in the eyes of the experts, though. While a Canadian team is very much in the race to end the nation’s Stanley Cup drought that began after Montréal’s 1993 triumph, the Habs are far-flung from contention, it seems.
A most unlikely string of Stanley Cup struggles
This year, should all of the seven Canadian franchises fail to achieve the feat, it will mark 30 years since the last time a team north of the border brought home the Stanley Cup. The 1993 win for the Habs marked the team’s 24th overall – the most by any NHL team. Behind Montréal for Canada, Toronto has 13, Edmonton has five, and Calgary has one Stanley Cup.
The lack of a Cup win isn’t to say that there haven’t been strong teams in Canada. The Canadiens making it to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2021 was the fifth time since 1993 that a Canadian team had finished second place. While the NHL is set up so that teams build, get as strong as they can, and then either win or fade, statistically speaking, there should have been another winner from Canada in the last 29 years.
As FiveThirtyEight detailed in this statistical report, the chance that at least one Canadian team would win the Stanley Cup sat at 97.5 percent when also weighing in regular season power rankings and playoff seeding. Perhaps the biggest eyebrow-raiser of this report is that it was published in 2013. Now, nearly another decade down the line, the statistical likelihood of at least one Canadian victory would be even greater.
Will Canada finally bring Lord Stanley’s trophy home?
Disappointingly, there’s very little faith in the Montréal Canadiens even contending in the playoffs this season, let alone going all the way. Bodog offers the best hockey bets, and their futures markets see the Habs at +15000 to win the Stanley Cup. Ahead of them, it’s the Winnipeg Jets (+6000), Ottawa Senators (+5000), Vancouver Canucks (+3500), Calgary Flames (+1500), Edmonton Oilers (+1400), and Toronto Maple Leafs (+700).
Of the bunch, the Maple Leafs, Oilers, and Flames are the true contenders for the crown. As much as any Canadian NHL fan wouldn’t like to see a rival side bring back the Stanley Cup, it would, at least, be nice to avoid the inevitable headlines and discussions chronicling the 30-year drought. There are the Colorado Avalanche and Sunshine State duo in the way, though.
Who knows, maybe the Canadiens can mount an unlikely assault on the NHL to break into the playoffs this season, but it seems more sensible to hope for a strategic, steady rebuild back to contention.
