from Brendan Kelly of the Montreal Gazette,

This is becoming a disturbingly familiar scenario. It’s spring in Montreal and there’s top-drawer, super-intense hockey being played but, sadly, yet again they’re hockey games not featuring your Montreal Canadiens.

This is the 24th straight year the Habs will not win the Stanley Cup. It is also the 24th straight year the team will not be in the Stanley Cup final. But who’s counting, right?

In the 24 years since Montreal last won the Cup, Les Boys have made it to the conference final only twice and, both times, they got smoked. It was worse in 2010, when an ordinary Philadelphia Flyers team crushed the Canadiens, with journeyman goalie Michael Leighton shutting out the Habs in three of the Flyers’ four victories. The other conference final appearance was in 2014 and that one ended before the final whistle in the first game — Rangers forward/villain Chris Kreider smashed into Carey Price and, in a nanosecond, the Habs’ chances of advancing went up in smoke.

Any way you slice it, it hasn’t been a memorable near-quarter-century for Habs fans. I get it. You don’t expect to win the Cup every year or two the way the Habs used to back in the day, but you do expect the team to be in the discussion every now and then.

So, like every spring since 1994, we stand around water coolers, cappuccino machines and bars, and mull over this sorry state of affairs as we watch amazing hockey teams out of the corner of our eyes playing amazing hockey at a level the Habs can only dream about.

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