Canadiens Vs Maple Leafs - Digging Into The Rivalry

Date: Thursday January 6, 2022
TV Coverage: TSN2 — 7:00 pm GMT-5
Venue: Bell Centre, Montreal

For the first 25 seasons of the NHL, the rivalry remained pretty muted, and the two teams only played out two playoff series. These came in the 1918 and 1925 seasons. In 1938, everything changed. When the Montreal Maroons were forced to fold there were only two NHL teams left in Canada–the Habs and the Leafs. 

Between 1944 and 1967, the teams met 11 times in the postseason, and for nearly twenty years, these two hockey giants dominated the league, with the Stanley Cup being awarded almost exclusively to one of these two clubs. The height of the rivalry came in the Stanley Cup of 1967. The Habs were the comfortable favourites, but the Leafs shocked everybody by taking the cup home to Toronto. This was their last Stanley Cup triumph to date. The Canadiens have won 10 Stanley Cups since that season.

Neither side has won the Stanley Cup since the Canadiens were crowned champions in the 1992-93 season. In fact, no Canadian team has lifted the trophy since then. The Leafs have been suffering from a playoff hoodoo and have not progressed beyond the first round since the 2003-04 season. 

The rivalry suffered a cooling-off period during the 90s as the two teams were placed into different conferences, and the meetings became more infrequent. Another realignment in 2013 brought the two old foes back into the same division, and the rivalry started all over again. 

For three years between 2014 and 2017, the Canadiens maintained an incredible 14-game winning streak over the Leafs. The Leafs finally broke this with a 4-3 overtime victory in Montreal. This was the first time that Toronto had won in Montreal for four years. The Leafs returned the favour by winning seven straight games against the Canadiens that lasted until the final game of the regular season in 2019. 

The Canadiens had won the first three meetings between the two teams in the 2019-20 season before NHL suspended the season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The condensed 2020-21 NHL season saw the two teams play each other ten times in the specially created Northern Division which saw all six Canadian clubs competing in the same division for the first time. 

Toronto and Montreal then met in the first round of the playoffs where the Leafs surprisingly let a 3-1 series lead slip. The Habs took the series 4-3 in the seventh game.

With the pride of two Canadian provinces at stake, the rivalry has always felt like it has carried a certain extra weight on its shoulders. Maple Leafs fans felt hard done when the Canadiens were named as the biggest sports brand in Canada in an opinion poll. Toronto fans hit back by pointing out that they've had over 53 years of consistent sellouts for home games. 

The rivalry is felt as strongly by the players as it is by the fans. Hall of fame goalie Ken Dryden called the game a "rivalry of cultures." The rivalry even reached the point of trades being blocked. 

In 2014, an attempted trade between the two teams was blocked when Montreal defensemen Josh Gorges refused to take the Maple Leafs off his no-trade list. He stated that he couldn't possibly give the same levels of performance and energy to his team's "most talked about rivals."

Both teams have had successful histories and are two of the most recognizable Canadian sports brands in history, and throughout the years, there's been only one place to watch this fierce rivalry play out. 

Hockey Night in Canada is the name given to the weekly broadcasting of hockey games on a Saturday night. It is Canada's longest-running TV program, and the show even has a Guinness World Record for being the globe's longest-running sports television program. 

The importance of Hockey Night in Canada can't be understated. First broadcast as a radio show in 1923, Hockey Night in Canada gave the entire country the chance to tune in to the nation's favourite sport. It opened up a whole new avenue for fan engagement and went a long way to establishing the popularity and marketability of the game that we see today. Before long, the listenership for these radio broadcasts had reached nearly 2.5 million people. 

On October 11, 1952, Hockey Night in Canada made its television debut on CBC and was originally only broadcast in French. The show soon made its English language debut a few weeks later, on November 1, 1952, showing a game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Boston Bruins. 

The show's TV popularity was almost instantaneous. By 1954, 77% of television sets in Montreal were tuned in to Hockey Night in Canada on any given Saturday night when the Canadiens were playing. 

The ratings have steadily climbed ever since. For nearly half a century now, Hockey Night in Canada has been the top-rated television broadcast in the country. The show has become a national brand almost as recognized and loved as Tim Horton's. 

Hockey Night in Canada was also at the forefront of innovations in sports broadcasting. The show was perhaps the first to utilize the "instant replay" feature that was invented by George Retzlaff and refined by CBC member of staff Ty Lemberg. We often take the instant replay for granted now, but the idea of being able to go back and re-watch goals straight away was a massive innovation in broadcasting. 

Hockey Night in Canada was also at the forefront of broadcasting sports in colour. This had a somewhat unexpected effect on the players. The lighting in the rinks was intensified to aid the television broadcasts, and players had to begin applying burnt cork to the area underneath their eyes to avoid the harsh glare of the ice under the new bright lights. 

Hockey Night in Canada also puts an emphasis on accessibility. To date, the show has produced broadcasts in French, English, Italian, Tagalog, Mandarin, Punjabi, and the indigenous Canadian language of Inuktitut. 

Hockey Night in Canada Live Stream

Hockey Night in Canada has come a long way since its humble beginnings as a radio broadcast. The show has been immensely popular on television, and now CBC has taken the step into live streaming. 

You can view a hockey night live stream of every HNIC broadcast on your desktop by heading over this link and checking out the broadcast schedule for the week. You can also watch HNIC by downloading the CBC mobile app for iOS and Android. 

Hockey Night in Canada has always been at the forefront of sports broadcasting in Canada. It introduced a whole new way for fans to follow their favourite teams, and it continues to adapt and evolve with current technology to keep every hockey fan firmly in the loop.

Don Cherry - The Original OG of Hockey Night in Canada

It's hard to talk about Hockey Night in Canada without talking about the divisive figure that is Don Cherry. Don Cherry has worked in nearly every role in professional hockey, but he's best known for his "coach's corner" segment on Hockey Night in Canada. 

As a player, Cherry spent the vast majority of his career in the AHL, where he won the Calder Cup four times in 1960, 1965, 1966, and 1968. He retired from playing after 16 seasons in the AHL. In 1972, Cherry became the head coach of the AHL's Rochester Americans and won the Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award for the AHL's coach of the year in 1974. 

After three seasons of coaching in the AHL, Cherry landed a job as the Boston Bruins head coach. His NHL coaching career got off to a flying start as he coached the Bruins to four consecutive first-place divisional finishes from 1975-1979. In 1976, he was awarded the Jack Adams Award and joined an illustrious club as one of the few coaches to be named coach of the year in both the NHL and the AHL. 

Despite a successful coaching career, Don Cherry is best known for his work as a television pundit on Hockey Night in Canada. Until 2019, Cherry was the presenter of the HNIC intermission segment "Coach's Corner." The segment featured Cherry analyzing that day's game and discussing broader talking points across the NHL. 

The segment was incredibly popular, and for some games, even drew higher viewing figures than the game itself. Cherry was also known for his intense Canadian patriotism and often found himself in hot water over his comments. 

He was dismissed from Hockey Night in Canada in 2019 over comments he made concerning immigration. His firing was a hugely divisive issue, and there still remains a debate about his stance in the game and whether or not he should have been fired from the show. 

He was inducted into the AHL hall of fame in 2019. 

Hockey Night in Canada remains a national institution for broadcasting live games. But hockey fans across the country also love to stay on top of recent news and read detailed analyses of the games they watch. This is where Hockey Buzz comes in.

Hockey Buzz is a platform that shares news, views, and analysis of everything happening in the world of hockey right now. Each NHL team has their own dedicated blog where fans can read up on everything that's happening. You can also try to start your own hockey blog by signing up to the site for membership.

The site also hosts a Fantasy NHL competition and a Cap Central page where visitors can see each NHL team's signings and compare where each team is at with their salary cap figures.

The Mystery Of Eklund - Who is He?

Truth be told, we have absolutely no idea. All we know is that this person founded Hockey Buzz and has, and will always remain anonymous. He apparently started a blog during the NHL lockout and has since exploded onto the scene with rumours and news related to ongoing labour negotiations. Exactly how does Eklund have access to such juicy info? It's said that while he started with a few inside sources during the lockout, those relationships have now spread across the entire league spanning all major cities and levels of employees in the NHL. Eklund's goal is to publicize any tid bit of information he finds, hears or is fed especially if that information is coming from a credible source. Posting that info is half the fun and most certainly ignites some passionate conversation in and around the folks who play on Hockey Buzz. To get the pucks in your head sliding over the ice even more, it's good to familiarize yourself with the E-System. As quoted on Hockey Buzz itself:

"E1 - This is a rumor that comes from a single reliable source not in any way directly connected to the players or teams involved.
E2 - This rumor is simply more than one reliable sources not in any way directly connected to the players or teams involved and not connected to each other. It does not have to equate to two E1's. It could be several E1's.
E3 - This rumor comes from a single source with ties somehow to the players or teams involved.
E4 - This rumor comes from more than one source with ties to the players or teams involved.
E5 - This rumor comes from source telling Eklund the deal is 100% done and just has not been announced yet"