5 Teams Canadiens Fans Should Cheer for in 2024 Playoffs

In fact, if you’re looking to cheer on teams because of specific players, the Stars’ opponents, the Golden Knights might end up being the better choice, with four Quebecers on their roster. William Carrier, Anthony Mantha, Nicolas Roy and last year’s Conn Smythe Trophy winner, Jonathan Marchessault.

Therein lies the primary reason to cheer against the wild-card Golden Knights (and for the Stars, by default), though: the fact they just won the Cup. It may be seen as somewhat petty, but, if you are indeed of the mindset no one can be happy if you can’t, well, there you go. It’s really just cheering for the underdog, which is a concept just about everyone can get behind, even if the Stars did just place first in the Western Conference.

Plus, if you’re of the belief the Golden Knights are actively circumventing the salary cap, with stars Mark Stone and Alex Pietrangelo “conveniently” returning before their first-round series begins? Well, that would be another reason to make the Stars your team, at least for Round 1, taking into account the theories the Tampa Bay Lightning were guilty of much the same offense with Nikita Kucherov back in 2021, when they beat the Canadiens 4-1 in the Stanley Cup Final.

4. Florida Panthers

Some may find it hard to ever look past that… or Kucherov in general. His infamous antics during the Lightning’s post-Stanley Cup press conference, during which he trash-talked Canadiens fans, could quasi-realistically forever turn them off of him and the Lightning.

So, that makes the Lightning’s first-round opponents almost favourites in the minds of those same people, almost by default. However, you’ve also got to look at the bigger picture, here. Not only are the Lightning arguably one of the Canadiens’ top rivals right now, but so are the Boston Bruins and Toronto Maple Leafs.

The winners of the Panthers-Lightning series will face the winner of that first-round match-up too… and you’d be hard-pressed to find a Canadiens fan cheering for one of them to so much as get out of Round 1 (even if one has too). So, playing the long game here, the Panthers may be just your ticket to ensure the winner there doesn’t get out of Round 2.

3. Winnipeg Jets

The Colorado Avalanche are other longtime Canadiens rivals, obviously dating back to their time as the Quebec Nordiques. So heated was that rivalry, a massacre took place between the two teams… on Good Friday of all days (for the uninitiated). Some may find it hard to look past it, while others may understandably have put that behind them once the franchise moved away nearly 30 years ago.

However, this goes past simply cheering against the Avalanche. Some may want to root for a Canadian team and the Avalanche’s opponents, the Winnipeg Jets, somewhat surprisingly ended up the top-point-getting squad north of the border this season (110 points).

Now, the Jets may not have the clearest path to the Stanley Cup among Canadian teams. That depends on subjective perspective. However, they do undeniably have a good team, if you can similarly look past Mark Scheifele for injuring Jake Evans three years ago, and it’s not like every Canadian team can make this list.

I mean, technically they can, obviously. However, the point is, just because a team is based in Canada, it doesn’t mean fans of another Canadian team have to cheer for it. Just look to the Leafs as proof to that effect… and do Canadiens fans really want another team besides the Habs to win the Cup to end Canada’s 31-year drought before them? Maybe… but it shouldn’t be an automatic.

2. New York Islanders

If you can look past the Good Friday Massacre and all that baggage, ex-Habs (and Avalanche) goalie Patrick Roy’s New York Islanders are a good choice. Keep in mind, the Canadiens did eventually retire Roy’s jersey. So, if those two sides can make up with each other, any hold-out fans looking for the right team to get behind should be able to get on board. Plus, there’s the whole having-won-two-Cup-with-the-Canadiens thing. That should help too.

What should help further is how the Isles are facing the Carolina Hurricanes, who infamously offer-sheeted Jesperi Kotkaniemi once upon a time. Forget the fact that ex-Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin started “it” by offer-sheeting Sebastian Aho and that Habs fans should more so take issue with him, additionally for opting to take the compensation from Kotkaniemi abandoning ship to trade for Christian Dvorak, which obviously hasn’t worked out. Why let that get in the way of a good story, with Kotkaniemi having failed to pan out with the Canes (yet), either?

Ultimately, it’s more so the fact the Isles are the (pen)ultimate underdogs. At the time Roy got hired on Jan. 20, they were two points out of the final Eastern Conference playoff spot. That difference fluctuated wildly, but it got as high as nine on Feb. 25, albeit with three games in hand. As late as March 27, they were six points out (zero games in hand).

That’s about as impressive as the 2019 Stanley Cup-champion St. Louis Blues. They obviously came back from being in last place in the entire league on the morning of Jan. 3, 2019 (11 points out of the last Western Conference playoff spot with four games in hand) to win it all. All the Islanders, who are the team with the second-lowest point total to qualify (94), need to do next is go all the way.

1. New York Rangers

With respect to the Washington Capitals, who earned the lowest amount of points (91), it’s hard to get totally behind them, seeing as they recently won it all (2018). They undeniably, impressively went 17-10-3 down the stretch to make it (a run that coincidentally started on Feb. 17 with a 4-3 win over the Canadiens). However, they’re also the team with the worst goal differential of the salary-cap era to make it, having to face the Presidents’ Trophy-winning New York Rangers for their trouble.

To a degree, it simply comes down to wanting to emotionally invest in a team that has a chance to go far. Logically speaking, the Caps just aren’t that team. True, the Panthers beat the regular-season-record-setting Bruins in the first round last spring. So, anything is possible.

However, between them and the Rangers, Canadiens fans in general should hope the latter win it all, simply by virtue of them being built at least in part by current-executive vice president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton. If they can do it, technically so can the Habs.

It wasn’t that long ago, six years to be exact, that Gorton and Glen Sather wrote an open letter to Rangers fans effectively admitting that they were going to rebuild. It took them four years to win even a single playoff game from that point, effectively putting the Canadiens, who started their rebuild in 2021, on track to follow in their footsteps. So, it isn’t as much about wanting the Rangers to win as it is about wanting the Habs to (and trusting in the process). They can be proof that it is possible. The Capitals simply have the distinction of being the first ones in their way.