Familiarity Helping The Montreal Canadiens As The Season Begins

While plenty of NHL teams are getting used to roster changes as the 2026-27 NHL regular season gets underway, the Montreal Canadiens feel like they’re benefitting from Familiarity.

The Montreal Canadiens returned to practice on Thursday afternoon in Pittsburgh after spending Wednesday doing off-ice team-bonding activities.

For the past few seasons, the Canadiens’ players have spent time together bonding towards the end of training camp. Unfortunately, there is a shorter training camp across the NHL this year to support the new 84-game schedule. With the Montreal Canadiens having three days off between Tuesday’s 3-2 win against the Toronto Maple Leafs and Saturday’s matchup against the Pittsburgh Penguins, they were able to take a day to bond as a team.

Following Thursday’s practice, head coach Martin St. Louis stressed the importance of team-bonding activities on the morale and success of a team. 

“I think it’s… it’s an opportunity. When you get a break in this kind of schedule, especially early on, [it’s important to take it], considering we didn’t get a chance to do it during training camp,” St. Louis told reporters.

“I know we have a close group, but it’s about having opportunities to get even closer,” St. Louis continued.

Defenseman Alexandre Carrier, who scored the game-winning goal on Tuesday night, also spoke to the media about what he thinks the team-bonding does for the Canadiens. 

“We’re the same team, but for a guy like [Chris] Kreider, who just got here, I think it’s important to include him as quickly as possible. And for the rest of us, we weren’t all together this summer. So, it’s really about reuniting the whole team,” Carrier told reporters.

The fact that the Montreal Canadiens are quite familiar with each other has translated to success on the ice, and while the entire NHL is starting fresh with a new season, the players knowing how to play together gives them an advantage over their opponents who have a lot of players need to learn new systems. On Tuesday night, it showed when the Canadiens, who were almost the same exact group as last season, controlled the majority of the game in a 3-2 win against the Maple Leafs, who had 10 new players in their lineup. While, the Canadiens were able to stick to their game plan well and get the job done as a team, there were many Leafs’ newcomers who struggled to play within their system.

Forward Oliver Kapanen returned to practice on Thursday, after missing the season-opener on Tuesday with a lower-body injury.  He reportedly spent practice rotating in with Alexandre Texier on a line with Phillip Danault and Kirby Dach.

Here are the Montreal Canadiens lines from Thursday’s practice according to Canadiens.com. 

Forwards:

Cole Caufield – Nick Suzuki – Chris Kreider

Juraj Slafkovsky – Alex Newhook – Ivan Demidov 

Oliver Kapanen / Alexandre Texier – Phillip Danault – Kirby Dach 

Zach Bolduc – Jake Evans – Josh Anderson / Florian Xhekaj 

Defense:

Mike Matheson – Noah Dobson 

Lane Hutson – Alexandre Carrier

Jayden Struble – Arber Xhekaj 

Adam Engstrom – Kaiden Guhle (No Contact Jersey)

Goalies:

Jakub Dobes 

Samuel Montembeault