Canadiens look poised to bring the Stanley Cup back to Canada

It has been 33 years since one of the NHL's Canadian-based teams has won the Stanley Cup. The Montreal Canadiens last won it during the 1992-93 season, and they are the only Canadian-based team still playing in this year's playoffs.

Thanks to their impressive 6-2 win over the Buffalo Sabres on Sunday night, they now have a 2-1 lead in their second-round series and are just two wins away from reaching the Eastern Conference Finals.

Everything is clicking for them right now, and even though we are not quite yet at the halfway point of the playoffs, it is time to start asking if they are the team that can bring the Stanley Cup back to Canada.

There is good reason to believe they can.

Canadiens look capable of snapping Canada's Stanley Cup drought

It is not just the fact that the Canadiens have won the past two games to take the upper hand in their second-round series that is impressive.

It is the way they have thoroughly dominated both games and completely dictated the pace of them and how they will be played.

They have outscored Buffalo by an 11-3 margin in the past two games and have everything clicking. 

Montreal has one of the NHL's best young cores of talent with forwards Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Ivan Demidov and Juraj Slafkovsky. They have all contributed in these playoffs. They have two legitimate top-pairing defensemen in Late Hutson and Noah Dobson. 

Having that sort of high-end talent is a necessity for winning in the playoffs, and Montreal has it.

What is really starting to get encouraging is the fact that a lot of their secondary players and goaltending are starting to come together to complement the top of the lineup.

Alex Newhook scored two more goals on Sunday to give him five in the playoffs. 

They have eight players who have scored at least two goals through the first 10 games of the playoffs.

They have also already beaten one of the Eastern Conference favorites (the Tampa Bay Lightning) and have now successfully wrestled home-ice advantage away from Buffalo in the second round. They also won all three regular-season games against the team they would have to get through in the Eastern Conference Final (the Carolina Hurricanes) by a 15-8 margin on aggregate. 

It is a legitimately good team, and it is one that should be taken seriously as a Stanley Cup contender. 

There is still a long way to go, but Montreal seems to have all of the ingredients it needs. 

Since the Canadiens won the Stanley Cup in 1993, there have been eight Canadian teams to reach the Stanley Cup Final only to lose: The Edmonton Oilers did so three times, the Vancouver Canucks did twice, and the Ottawa Senators, Calgary Flames and Canadiens all did once.

Edmonton went in each of the past two seasons, losing to the Florida Panthers both times.