The Montreal Canadiens, formally , was founded on December 4, 1909. The Canadiens are the oldest professional ice hockey franchise in the world. Created as a founding member of the National Hockey Association (NHA) with the aim of appealing to Montreal's francophone population, the Canadiens played their first game on January 5, 1910, and captured their first Stanley Cup in 1916. The team left the NHA and helped found the National Hockey League (NHL) in 1917. They returned to the Stanley Cup Final in 1919, but their series against the Seattle Metropolitans was cancelled without a winner due to the Spanish flu pandemic that killed defenceman Joe Hall. The Canadiens have won the Stanley Cup 24 times: once while part of the National Hockey Association (NHA), and 23 times as members of the NHL. With 24 NHL titles overall, they are the most successful team in league history.
The Canadiens' home rink, the Montreal Arena, was destroyed by fire in January 1918. The team moved into the Jubilee Arena, which subsequently burned down in 1919. After spending seven seasons in the Mount Royal Arena, the Canadiens moved into the Montreal Forum in 1926, sharing it with the rival Montreal Maroons until 1938. After 72 years in the Forum, they moved to the Bell Centre in 1996. The club struggled during the Great Depression, nearly relocating to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1935 and contemplated suspending operations in 1939. Their fortunes rebounded following World War II as they reached the Stanley Cup Final each year from 1951 to 1960, winning six championships, including a record five consecutive titles from 1956 to 1960.
Maurice "Rocket" Richard emerged as the team's star in the 1940s, and during the 1944–45 season became the first player in NHL history to score 50 goals in a single season. Richard sparked the Richard Riot in March 1955 when he was suspended for attacking a linesman. The incident highlighted growing tensions between French Quebec and English Canada, and is regarded as one of the first manifestations of Quebec's Quiet Revolution. In 1959, Jacques Plante revolutionized the game when he became the first goaltender to consistently wear a mask during play. Under general manager Sam Pollock, the Canadiens won nine championships between 1964 and 1978. The 1976–77 team, often regarded as the greatest in NHL history, won 60 games while losing only 8, a record for fewest losses in an 80-game season. With the entry of the World Hockey Association's Quebec Nordiques to the NHL in 1979, a rivalry grew between the Canadiens and the Nordiques, peaking in 1984 when the Canadiens eliminated the Nordiques in six games, but not before the Good Friday Massacre made headlines.
Led by goaltender Patrick Roy, the Canadiens won their 23rd Stanley Cup in 1986 and their 24th in 1993. Roy won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoffs' most valuable player both times. The 1993 team set an NHL record with 10 consecutive overtime victories in one playoff year and is the most recent Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup. In 2003, Montreal participated in the first regular season outdoor game in NHL history, defeating the Edmonton Oilers in the Heritage Classic.
The Hockey Hall of Fame has inducted over 50 former Canadiens players, as well as ten executives. The team has retired 15 numbers, representing 18 players, and has honoured ten off-ice personnel in its Builder's Row.
Founding
In November 1909, industrialist Ambrose O'Brien of Renfrew, Ontario, was in Montreal to purchase supplies for a railway contract. At the request of the Renfrew Creamery Kings hockey team, he attended the Eastern Canada Hockey Association (ECHA) meetings, held at the Windsor Hotel, to represent Renfrew in its application to join the league. At the meeting, the ECHA team owners rejected Renfrew's application. Later that day the ECHA's owners chose to disband their league and form the Canadian Hockey Association (CHA) in a bid to exclude the Montreal Wanderers, who had upset the other owners when they moved into a smaller arena that would reduce the visiting team's share of gate receipts. In the lobby of the hotel, O'Brien met Jimmy Gardner, manager of the Wanderers, and discussed forming a new league which would include Renfrew, the Wanderers, and two teams that O'Brien owned in the Ontario mining towns of Cobalt and Haileybury. Gardner suggested that O'Brien start a team of francophone players based in Montreal, forming a rivalry with the Wanderers. As a result, the National Hockey Association (NHA) was founded on December 2, 1909, and Les Canadiens were created two days later, initially financed by O'Brien with the intent of transferring ownership to francophone sportsmen in Montreal as soon as possible.
At the time, francophone teams were not considered to be good enough to play with the top anglophone teams: the Montreal Gazette warned potential fans of the new team not to get too excited, as "French-Canadian players of class are not numerous". The Canadiens stocked their team with francophone stars including Newsy Lalonde, Georges Poulin and Didier Pitre. Before being allowed to play, Pitre had to resolve a lawsuit with the Montreal Nationals, to which he was already under contract.
1910–1917: National Hockey Association
The Canadiens played their first game on January 5, 1910, coached by Jack Laviolette. Before a sellout crowd of 3,000, they defeated Cobalt 7–6 in overtime. The victory was erased from the history books shortly after, as the CHA collapsed after only two weeks of play, and the NHA chose to restart the season after absorbing the CHA's Ottawa Senators and the Montreal Shamrocks. The Canadiens' first game of the new season was played January 19, a 9–4 loss to the Renfrew Creamery Kings. They lost three more games before finally recording their first victory of the new season on February 7, when they defeated the Haileybury Hockey Club by a score of 9–7. They won only two of their 12 games that season, and finished last in the eight-team league.
George Kennedy, owner of the Club Athlétique Canadien (CAC), claimed rights to the "Canadiens" team name following the season. He settled the dispute by buying the team from O'Brien for $7,500. That same year, the team adopted its now-famous red sweater with a blue stripe across the front. In the middle of the stripe was an elongated red C encompassing a red A to represent the CAC.
The Canadiens reached the playoffs for the first time in 1913–14 when they tied the Toronto Blueshirts for the league lead with 26 points. The two teams played a two-game series for the championship, with the winner based on total goals. Georges Vezina shut out the Blueshirts 2–0 in the first game, but the Canadiens were defeated 6–0 in the second and lost the series. Two years later, in 1915–16, the Canadiens won the NHA championship, the O'Brien Cup, with a 16–7–1 record, three wins better than the second place Senators. The title earned the Canadiens their first berth in the Stanley Cup Final, where they faced the Portland Rosebuds of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA). With the best-of-five series tied at two wins apiece, the deciding game was held at Westmount Arena in Montreal on March 30, 1916. Montreal's Goldie Prodgers scored the winning goal with less than four minutes to play, giving the Canadiens their first Stanley Cup championship.
In 1916, the CAC faced financial difficulty after a January fire destroyed its gymnasium and the Montreal Canadians lacrosse team failed. Kennedy separated the hockey club from the CAC and incorporated it in March 1916 as "Le club de Hockey Canadien". The Canadiens changed their logo to a red "C" interlocked with a white "H". The H in the logo stands for "hockey," though the long-standing misconception that it stands for "Habitants" led to the team being nicknamed "the Habs".
The NHA met its demise in the winter of 1917 following several long-running disputes between Blueshirts owner Eddie Livingstone and the league's other four teams over who owned the rights to various players. Kennedy especially disliked Livingstone, and the two nearly came to blows numerous times during league meetings. However, the Canadiens, Wanderers, Senators and Quebec Bulldogs discovered that while they were united in their distaste for Livingstone, the league constitution didn't allow them to simply vote him out. To solve this problem, on November 26 they created a new league, the National Hockey League (NHL), and didn't invite Livingstone to join them. They nominally remained members of the NHA and had enough votes to suspend the league's operations, effectively leaving Livingstone in a one-team league. Kennedy was the dominant force in the new league; he not only owned the Canadiens, but had loaned Tommy Gorman the money he used to buy the Senators. However, the four teams still desired to have a team from Toronto in their league. They also needed a fourth team to balance the schedule after financial difficulties forced the Bulldogs to suspend operations (as it turned out, they wouldn't take the ice until 1919). With this in mind, they granted a "temporary" franchise to the Toronto Arena Company, which eventually evolved into the Canadiens' rivals, the Toronto Maple Leafs.
1917–1932: Early National Hockey League
Joe Malone recorded five goals for the Canadiens in their NHL debut, a 7–4 victory over the Senators, en route to a league leading 44 goal season. The fledgling league nearly collapsed on January 2, 1918, after a fire destroyed the Montreal Arena, home to both the Wanderers and the Canadiens. The Canadiens relocated to the 3,000-seat Jubilee Arena, but the Wanderers ceased operations, reducing the NHL to three teams. Playing a revamped split season schedule, Montreal won the first half title, but lost the league championship to second half winning Toronto by a score of 10–7 in a two-game, total goals series.
The Canadiens won the NHL championship against the Senators in 1918–19, and traveled west to meet the PCHA champion Seattle Metropolitans for the Stanley Cup. The series is best remembered for its cancellation due to the Spanish flu pandemic. Several players from both teams became ill, prompting health officials in Seattle to cancel the sixth, and deciding, game. With his entire team either in the hospital or confined to bed, Kennedy attempted to borrow players from the PCHA's Victoria Aristocrats, only to be turned down by PCHA president Frank Patrick. With no way to field a team, Kennedy announced he was forfeiting the game—and the Cup—to the Metropolitans. However, the Metropolitans turned it down; coach Pete Muldoon felt that with the Canadiens decimated by the flu, it wouldn't be sportsmanlike to claim the title. Star defenceman Joe Hall never recovered, and died on April 5, 1919.
During the following summer, the Jubilee Rink burned down, forcing the Canadiens to build Mount Royal Arena as a replacement. The team also lost their star player Malone, who had been on loan from the dormant Bulldogs as Quebec rejoined the league in 1919–20. Kennedy died in 1921; he had never recovered from the 1919 flu. His widow sold the team to Leo Dandurand, former player Joseph Cattarinich and Louis A. Letourneau.
Regarded as one of the NHL's first superstars, Howie Morenz made his debut in 1923–24 alongside Aurel Joliat. The club placed second in the league to Ottawa, but defeated the Senators in the playoffs to win the league championship and reach the Stanley Cup Final. Montreal hosted the 1924 Stanley Cup Final against the Calgary Tigers of the Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL). The Canadiens won the best-of-three series in two games, and captured their second Stanley Cup. Morenz was the offensive star of the series, scoring a hat trick in game one and a goal in game two.