‘A long journey’: Young, upstart Canadiens off to East final after rebuild

BUFFALO — Nick Suzuki lived through the dark days.

The Montreal Canadiens captain made the playoffs — including a magical, improbable pandemic trip to the Stanley Cup final — in his first two NHL campaigns.

He wouldn’t be back for quite some time.

The Original Six franchise subsequently missed the post-season three years running as it pivoted to a rebuild. Franchise legends Carey Price and Shea Weber exited stage right. The roster was largely torn down to the studs.

There were plenty of tough moments. Montreal, however, believed it was on the right path. What wasn’t clear was when a breakthrough would truly come.

It has arrived on a May night in Western New York — and those painful moments were worth it.

The Canadiens are off to the Eastern Conference final and will face the Carolina Hurricanes following a roller-coaster, seven-game victory over the Buffalo Sabres in the second round.

“It’s been a long journey,” Suzuki said in the bowels of KeyBank Center late Monday night following a 3-2 overtime victory that clinched the series. “From when we went to the Cup final, then we finished last place in the whole league, to where we are now … there’s been a lot of different steps.”

The process began in earnest with the hiring of Jeff Gorton to lead hockey operations in November 2021. That continued with the addition of former player agent Kent Hughes as general manager two months later and Martin St. Louis as head coach in February 2022.

Montreal would bottom out in the standings that season and earn the right to select top-line winger Juraj Slafkovsky with the first overall pick at the NHL draft before also snagging future No. 1 defenceman Lane Hutson late in the second round.

Trades included acquiring defenceman Mike Matheson along with forwards Kirby Dach and Alex Newhook, who has become Montreal’s Mr. Game 7 after bagging the winner against the Tampa Bay Lightning in this spring’s opening round and also sending Buffalo packing in extra time.

St. Louis said the organization didn’t have a specific rebuild timeline, but sticking to core principles was the key.

“I love our process,” said the Hall of Fame forward. “There’s days that are better than others, but we just come every day and try to win that day. Maybe it’s that mentality that has accelerated us.

“We just try to take care of each and every day.”

Flashy forward Ivan Demidov — a role of the dice as a Russian under contract in the Kontinental Hockey League — was then picked fifth in 2024 and joined the club late last season as another piece in an elite forward group led by Suzuki and future 50-goal man Cole Caufield.

“Something was brewing over here for the last couple years,” said veteran winger Josh Anderson, another 2021 Cup run holdover. “We’ve been working really hard to build what we’ve got going on right now. Sometimes you have to go through those growing pains to be successful.

“It was just nice to do it together.”

There were never any age-related excuses for the group — the youngest team to make the third round since the 1993 Canadiens with an average of 25.8 years — during the rebuild.

“It’s easy to just use the age as a crutch,” said St. Louis, whose team opens the East final Thursday in Raleigh, N.C. “The process that we have in place, and the environment and the mindset … it’s allowed us to grow no matter how old we are.

“You can learn anything if you put your mind to it.”

The Canadiens returned to the playoffs last April against the Washington Capitals, falling in five games as a wild-card seed.

Montreal, which added another blue-line piece in Noah Dobson over the summer and saw Jakub Dobes emerge as its go-to goaltender, surged to 106 points and a third-place finish in the Atlantic Division in 2025-26 before surviving a slugfest with Tampa and securing a back-and-forth Buffalo matchup.

“What we’re going through right now, you can’t buy that,” St. Louis said. “It’s amazing. I’m so happy for the players to live that. It’s unreal to play in the NHL. But to get to live this do-or-die situation, in terms of moving on or you’re done, scoring the big goal in overtime, that feeling that a player has, it’s unbelievable.

“Our age is our age. We’re just going to focus on what can we do as a team.”

Matheson said the players were starting to get sick of hearing about the rebuild.

“A little tired of that whole viewpoint,” he said. “As if we have to keep being patient, and wait and our time will come.

“It’s exciting for us and motivating for us to see that we’re at this stage already.”

Newhook, who won the Cup with the Colorado Avalanche in 2022, sees a Montreal team with all the tools to keep moving on.

“We know what we’re capable of,” he said. “We’re excited to keep it rolling.”

Suzuki said the belief has been there all along that a new Canadiens dawn was coming. Now they’re basking in its glow — with even tougher challenges to come.

“It’s really cool to be in this situation this fast and being such a young team,” he said. “We just have a lot of fun … just want to keep the journey going.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 19, 2026.

Joshua Clipperton, The Canadian Press