WARMINGTON: Montreal now Canada's last hope to finally bring Stanley Cup back home

· Toronto Sun

It’s now up to the Montreal Canadiens as Canada’s only hope to break the Stanley Cup drought this season.

It would be fitting if the Habs found a way to win the 2026 NHL title since the last time a Canadian team raised the Cup in 1993 it was Les Canadiens.

Visit newsbetting.bond for more information.

Canada is due – 33 years is a long time.

Of course, next season it will be 60 years since the Maple Leafs won the Cup – ironically against those dreaded Canadiens in 1967.

For now, most Canadians – even here in Toronto – are rooting for Montreal as the last Canadian team standing in this years playoffs. Some fans are even heading to Montreal on the train or highways to be there for this big game.

The Habs have a chance to break the jinx and bring that hardware to Quebec again – for the 25th time. But they have a big test in Game 6 on Friday night at the Bell Centre against the pesky and experienced Tampa Bay Lightning. The Bell Centre is going to be rocking.

“There’s playoff hockey, and then there’s playoff hockey in Montreal,” Habs forward Cole Caufield said.

He’s right – a nd these fans have set such an amazing standard of how much fun a live game can be, as well as the impact the home crowd can have on the players on the ice, the officials and the game itself.

No better fans than at the Bell Centre

When they sing Ole, ole, ole, ole, or Sweet Caroline and Country Roads, you get a sense it’s more than just a sporting event – it’s a special life moment.

There’s nowhere else like it in North American sports that I have seen.

Sometimes Toronto crowds at Leafs games – or TFC or Raptors or Blue Jays games – can be pretty raucous, but Montreal takes it to a whole other level because they don’t just react to something good happening in the game or the anticipation of it starting. They have their own songs and chants and moves, and they do it as a collective.

Habs fans are the seventh player.

A lot of us would love to see that fandemonium in Toronto but that ferocity can’t be recreated easily since a lot of happens organically. And Toronto fans can be fickle.

Just look at how they didn’t really support Captain Auston Matthews when he came back with his gold medal for winning with the United States at the Olympics after visiting the Trump White House.

That said, it sure was loud in those years Doug Gilmour and Wendel Clark were lighting it up in the playoffs.

Only so much game staff can do to create atmosphere

Montreal has lots to cheer about this year. What happens there can’t be easily replicated since it’s not easy to organize fans – especially when the people in there have all paid handsomely to be attending or are using corporate seats.

There is only so much the game staff can do to create an atmosphere and they certainly do a good job of game presentation for all of the Toronto teams and venues.

One cool thing Montreal does is not over blast the music – they let the fans take centre stage if they are game to do so.

Ultimately, it’s fans who decide the spirit and temperature. And good fans don’t just cheer when things are going well for their team – they also use their big numbers to ignite the home side when things are not going well.

There’s nothing a visiting team loves more than to hear the silence of a crowd that was originally super loud. It’s like pulling the plug and letting all the water drain out.

One place that has shown itself to be an off-the-charts playoff inferno is down at the KeyBank Centre in Buffalo, which has literally been on fire during these playoffs – the Sabres first appearance in the post season in 14 years. The fans were starved and it shows.

And not just inside the arena but outside too. Amazing spirit there – much like what I witnesses during those years the NFL Buffalo Bills went to four straight Super Bowls.

Cami Clune a new star

In many ways, the Sabres and the Detroit Red Wings are unofficial Canadian teams because their arenas are just over a river and across the border. There’s debate on how many Canadians go to the games, but it’s a significant amount.

But fans this week showed incredible passion by helping out amazing Sabres anthem singer Cami Clune when her microphone stopped working in the middle of O Canada. They just starting singing loud in unison and created a magical, memorable moment.

I wrote about that and so did a lot of other people.

What I didn’t realize was just after that incredible happening, they handed Cami – who appeared on The Voice competition in 2019 – a new microphone and she belted out the most powerful and spine-tingling version of the Star Spangled Banner heard in years .

And once again, even though she didn’t need it this time, she was joined by the crowd.

Superstar Clune is a terrific anthem singer but she is also a talented performer with a new song and album out. She is playing at two western New York casinos for her stage show this weekend and will be ready if needed for a Bruins-Sabres Game 7 on Sunday if needed.

It won’t matter if the microphone works or not because that place will be electric, again – just as the Bell Centre will be on Friday night as Hoser hockey fans in both official languages pray the Stanley Cup can finally come back home to where it belongs.

[email protected]

Read full story at source