Happy St. Patrick’s Day. It’s a special occasion, one that hockey fans typically spend drinking slightly more beer than usual, thinking, “Wait, why is my team wearing green?” and watching old YouTube clips of people punching each other.
Today, fans can also spend it with 10 matchups, including a classic Canadian rivalry.
HNIC Game of the Night: Canadiens at Maple Leafs
The Maple Leafs and Canadiens have been back in the same division for nearly two decades now, and they’ve spent most of that time engaged in a strange dance where only one team at a time can be any good. When the Leafs were contending for a Cup under Pat Quinn around the turn of the century, the Habs mostly missed the playoffs. When the Canadiens followed that up by making the post-season in eight of the first 10 post-lockout seasons, the Maple Leafs decidedly did not. And now that Toronto is finally good again, Montreal seems to be on the verge of a rebuild.
But through it all, it’s been a consistent truth that games between the teams always seemed to be good, or at least memorable. Even when one team was awful and had nothing to play for, there was something about the Toronto/Montreal matchup that could be counted on to produce at least a little magic. Whether it was a dramatic goal or some bad blood or a serenade gone wrong, something fun would happen. You can scoff at lame stories about rivalries and history and ghosts all you want, but the Leafs and Habs usually delivered.
Tonight will put that theory to the test. The Canadiens don’t have much of anything left to play for, and come in having lost six of their last seven. With Shea Weber, Carey Price and Max Pacioretty all out of the lineup with long-term injuries, the Habs are clearly in just-get-it-over-with mode down the stretch. Even the usual narrative about playing for next year’s jobs only goes so far, as we’re not even sure whether the current GM will still be around to make those roster calls. You could forgive Montreal fans if they were more interested in making little heart-eyes at John Tavares than in watching what’s left of this roster play out the string.
Meanwhile, the Leafs come into this one riding a franchise-record 11-game home winning streak. It’s been an impressive run, especially with most of it coming without Auston Matthews. But it hasn’t done much to change the standings, where Toronto remains locked into third place in the Atlantic. With 10 games left in the regular season after this one, the Leafs would probably prefer to fast-forward straight to the playoffs, if only to avoid any more injuries like the ones that have claimed Matthews, Frederik Andersen and most recently Leo Komarov.
So two teams, only one of which is any good, and neither with much of anything to play for. And yet… well, it’s still Toronto and Montreal. As eye-rolling as the premise may be, there really is something special about seeing the league’s oldest rivalry play out on a Saturday night. And with the way these things tend to go, would anyone be all that shocked to see a depleted Montreal roster arrive in town and pull off the upset, snapping the Leafs’ record-setting win streak in the process?
If you’ve followed this rivalry over the years, you know to expect the unexpected by now. At the very least, Toronto fans may want to keep the victory songs to themselves until the final buzzer.
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