Montreal Canadiens' Lane Hutson and Juraj Slafkovský celebrate teammate Kaiden Guhle's goal over the Carolina Hurricanes during second period NHL hockey action in Montreal on April 16.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
After the game was won, and fans were wildly chanting under the watchful eye of mounted riot police, Greg Miles still could hardly believe it.
“The last month has been unreal,” he said, standing outside the Bell Centre and wearing a crisp new red-white-and-blue Demidov jersey. “I thought they were going to miss the playoffs!”
Instead, the Montreal Canadiens did what even seasoned analysts thought was impossible and clinched a spot in the National Hockey League’s big dance, in their last game of the regular season no less, transporting millions of fans like Mr. Miles on a dreamlike escape from the harsh realities of a world in turmoil.
The city’s beloved team, its secular religion, has eclipsed a federal election campaign, a global trade war and an unprecedented threat to Canada’s very existence in the minds of many Montrealers. The unexpected playoff run of coach Martin St. Louis’s side and the recent arrival of 19-year-old Russian phenom Ivan Demidov – “demigod” to his worshippers – has delighted and distracted an anxious city.
“Can La Sainte-Flanelle save us from Donald Trump?“ read one Journal de Montréal headline last Saturday, using the team’s quasi-spiritual nickname, and tongue only partly in cheek.
Politics has necessarily taken a back seat. When the French-language leaders’ debate was scheduled to coincide with the Habs’ decisive game on Wednesday, it was no contest – the debate was moved two hours earlier. Even then, no less a political animal than Quebec Premier François Legault was spotted in his seat while the potential prime ministers continued to hash out their plans for the country in the Radio-Canada building.
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Few Montrealers would blame Mr. Legault, a famously avid Habs fan, for his choice. The most talked-about campaign poster of the race has not belonged to any of the candidates, but to Mr. Demidov, who featured on signs created by hockey equipment maker Warrior Sports bearing his likeness and the slogan “Là pour les Canadiens.”
Hockey fever had already seized Montreal, thanks to the team’s lovable band of bright-faced young players such as captain Nick Suzuki, sniper Cole Caufield and brilliant rookie defenceman Lane Hutson. A franchise nominally in the process of rebuilding turned out to be far better than hoped and started creeping into the playoff picture.
But the shock news that Mr. Demidov was prematurely leaving his team in Russia’s KHL to join the Canadiens in early April made Montrealers swoon. The Habs had drafted him with the fifth overall pick in the 2024 draft and YouTube clips had built a minor cult around the prodigiously talented teenager but on arrival in North America he was greeted as something more like a saviour.
Sports columnists took to saying that no Canadiens prospect had been so eagerly awaited since Guy Lafleur in the 1970s. Fans gathered at Toronto’s Pearson airport to cheer Demidov’s arrival last week, chanting his name while decked out in the bleu, blanc et rouge.
The kid did not disappoint in his debut against the Chicago Blackhawks on Monday, notching a pretty assist and scoring a breathtaking goal of his own in the first period.
A confluence of factors have contributed to the delirium around this team, said Benoît Melançon, an emeritus professor of literature at the University of Montreal who has written extensively about hockey and the Canadiens.
As a city of self-proclaimed underdogs with a pronounced joie de vivre, Montreal recognizes itself in this group of undersized youngsters who play with the freedom of kids on a backyard rink. For the first time in years, said Prof. Melançon, the franchise is selling the present and the future instead of the glorious past.
Although Habs fans hardly need an excuse to get wrapped up in their team, U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats have also brought people together around one of the country’s most venerable institutions. Long-time supporters have noticed the decibel levels in the Bell Centre reaching new, ear-splitting levels.
“There’s been a rallying around the team because of the political context,” said Prof. Melançon. “Fans have started singing O Canada louder and louder.”
Of course, the good vibes could never survive a bad team, or a boring one, and the Canadiens have been neither. The squad has taken Montreal on a roller coaster of dismal beginnings, surprise improvement, hope, angst and relief. They prolonged the sweet agony this week by failing to clinch during Mr. Demidov’s magical debut, losing in a shootout to the Blackhawks and forcing a crucial final game at the Bell Centre on Wednesday.
There was a buzz in the Lucien-L’Allier metro station 90 minutes before the first face-off as fans in Demidov sweaters walked nervously up the escalators to the arena. A chorus of 21,000 drowned out the anthem singer during the final chorus of O Canada. An exhilarating first period was followed by a nervy second until the ecstatic release of Mr. Suzuki’s go-ahead goal.
Stéphane Laporte, the TV producer and Canadiens superfan, felt a sense of “collective happiness” wash over Montreal from roughly the moment Kaiden Guhle scored to make the score 3-1. It’s a rare thing, collective happiness, he noted; usually we traverse hardship collectively, linking arms to get through some test, like “being threatened by our biggest ally.”
But when Mr. Guhle scored for the second time on the night, the arena vibrated with the roar of the crowd.
“It came from the bottom of us, that cry of joy,” said Mr. Laporte.