As the intensity of the NHL Playoffs reaches new heights, all eyes are fixed on Montreal, where a sense of destiny hangs thick in the air. The Canadiens, long revered for their storied history, now find themselves armed with two electrifying talents—Patrik Laine and Ivan Demidov—whose arrival has sent shockwaves through the league.

Anticipation and excitement ripple through the city, fueling dreams of a championship run that could redefine the legacy of this iconic franchise. With the Capitals looming as formidable adversaries, the stage is set for a clash that promises both drama and spectacle.

Montreal’s faithful dare to believe that this year, something extraordinary is unfolding—a moment when skill, passion, and determination converge under the brightest lights. As talk of secret weapons and unstoppable duos fills the headlines, one question dominates the conversation: can the Canadiens harness their newfound power and deliver a victory that will echo through hockey history? The answer, as the puck drops, remains tantalizingly within reach, and the world is watching to see if this is the moment Montreal reclaims its place atop the hockey world.

By Arpon Basu

A favourite tradition of playoff time is hearing opposing coaches pump each other’s tires, especially in a series that looks like as much of a mismatch as the Montreal Canadiens and Washington Capitals.

Thankfully, that is exactly what we got from Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis and his Capitals counterpart, Spencer Carbery.

St. Louis was rather succinct with his praise of the Capitals after a very optional practice Friday when he was asked which team he feels has more pressure to win.

“I feel it’s the best team in the league,” St. Louis responded. “So you do the math.”

Carbery, for his part, tried to debunk this notion that the Canadiens are this super young and inexperienced team, even though they are literally the youngest among the 16 playoff teams in the NHL.

“People forget — I think I’m accurate with this — there’s six players out of the 18 skaters … that were in the Stanley Cup Final on this team,” Carbery told reporters in Washington after practice Saturday. “Everybody calls this a young team, they’ve got all these young players. Six of these players played in the Stanley Cup Final in the bubble, right? I think (Jake) Evans played half the games or a handful of games in the playoffs, but he played on that Stanley Cup Final team. So they do have some experience and guys that have been there on deep runs.”

Carbery is mostly correct on that. Evans, in fact, played seven games in the 2021 playoffs, including the final three of the final against the Tampa Bay Lightning. The other holdovers from that Canadiens team are Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Brendan Gallagher, Josh Anderson and Joel Armia. But Carbery did not count David Savard, who played in that series for the Lightning.

It’s not clear why coaches always do this heading into a playoff series, but they do, all the time. And while Carbery’s point is valid, that more than one-third of the Canadiens skaters played in a Cup final five years ago, there is something to be said for something else he said about the Canadiens.

“They will, without question, be a confident team coming into this series,” Carbery said.

“They just made the playoffs, they were in, they were out, they have come from behind, they were not in the playoffs and now they’ve gone on a great run and made it.

“There’s momentum and positive energy, there’s zero doubt in their room right now.”

If you take what St. Louis said about the Capitals being the best team in the league, it would be easy to counter that based on what Carbery is saying. Here are the two teams since the return from the 4 Nations Face-Off in February (league-wide ranking in parentheses).

Now, it should be noted that the Capitals haven’t had a whole lot on the line for weeks while the Canadiens have been fighting for their lives. That matters. But it’s almost as if the two teams had opposite seasons.

The Capitals were 10-4-1 after 15 games, the Canadiens were 4-9-2. The Capitals went 4-7-1 down the stretch, and the Canadiens went 7-1-2 in their final 10.

But there is one big difference between the Canadiens team Carbery is preparing the Capitals to face and the one that played for the vast majority of this season. And Carbery pointed it out on his own Saturday after practice.

He was about to talk generally about the Canadiens forward group when Carbery went on a sudden aside.

“I find that their forward group — especially now with the addition of (Ivan) Demidov — gives them a little bit of a new look, especially if Marty deploys Demidov, (Patrik) Laine and (Alex) Newhook as a real offensive line that he can give a bunch of O-zone starts to, put on the fly,” he said.

Yes, on top of the momentum the Canadiens are entering the series with, the addition of rookie Ivan Demidov to the lineup is something Carbery will need to account for in some way, without really knowing a whole lot about him. But Carbery obviously saw the two games the Canadiens played with Demidov in the lineup, and what he saw was enough to make him mention the dynamic rookie when answering a very general question about the Canadiens.

Demidov’s line with Newhook and Laine has the potential to be a real tipping point in this series. Either the Canadiens get nothing, or they get a lot of offence. It doesn’t seem like that line will provide anything in between.

Demidov has impressed his teammates and of course Canadiens fans with his performance in his NHL debut, but he is only 19 and has been in North America for only a little more than a week. Now he’s preparing for his playoff debut.

“I thought about it,” Demidov said after practice Saturday. “I just come in from the flight, so fast, and now I am here.”

Demidov has not looked nervous for one minute since his arrival, and St. Louis made no attempt to hide the fact his new rookie gives him options on what’s been a pedestrian power play since 4 Nations. He wasn’t asked about Demidov’s usage on the power play after practice Friday, he was just asked about his top unit on the power play.

“I have a bunch of cards I can use,” St. Louis said. “Obviously, we have Demidov now, it’s a new card. I don’t know exactly how I’m going to use all these cards, but we have a lot of cards.”

Demidov was still on the second power-play unit at practice Saturday, but stay tuned on that front. We’ve already seen St. Louis give much more time to the second unit since Demidov’s arrival, and if the top unit continues to sputter along here, it’s not hard to imagine St. Louis inserting Demidov there if the Canadiens lose a game or two in Washington.

“I think it’s a good team, and I just want to help win,” Demidov said. “I can bring the energy. I just want to help.”

Another one of St. Louis’ cards is Laine.

Laine has been through a lot, from an injury in Columbus last season to entering the player assistance program to being traded to Montreal to being injured again in training camp. He made an instant impact at a critical point in the Canadiens’ season when he returned from injury, but his scoring has dried up and he has not shown himself to be reliable enough at five-on-five to get on the ice late in games.

But the playoffs are a fresh start for everyone, and Laine is the Canadiens player with the most to gain from starting a new season because his ceiling is so high, and he has not been close to that ceiling of late.

“Yeah, I’ll turn it up,” Laine said Saturday. “Regular season is a different thing, but playoffs is a different kind of animal, I always get fired up. Playoffs or national team, big games overall, it’s always kind of been the switch for me. So I’m just excited to turn it on Monday.”

Newhook has been playing good hockey for weeks. If St. Louis can get similarly good hockey out of Laine and Demidov, as Carbery noted, it changes everything for the Canadiens. It impacts what the Canadiens do on the power play and it impacts the Canadiens’ ability to roll four lines at five-on-five, which is when they are at their best.

Because otherwise, Carbery really has one thing to lose sleep over when defending the Canadiens.

Well, two things when you add in him needing to remember that it is Lane Hutson who plays for the Canadiens, and his brother Cole Hutson is a Capitals draft pick. He failed on his first attempt at that Saturday.

“What everybody knows is (Nick) Suzuki’s line with Cole Hutson, since the 4 Nations, we have them as the best line in the National Hockey League. So, they’re a handful,” Carbery said.

“So utilizing Lane — and make sure I do not, catch me if I do, because Lane and Cole, I will mess that up at some point because I’ve said Cole Hutson so many times over the last year, I’m going to say that name in this series, I guarantee it — him with that line, call it a five-some, is as dynamic of a group as there is in the league.”

Carbery is right that Suzuki’s line with Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovský, when paired with Hutson and Kaiden Guhle behind them, is what makes the Canadiens offence go. For the Canadiens to win the series, however, some other sources of offence will need to emerge.

St. Louis has two somewhat unknown cards in his hand to address that secondary source of offence. It will be fascinating to see how he plays them.