When your franchise wins 24 Stanley Cups (or 25 depending on which historian you speak with), you’re bound to have a plethora of candidates for number retirement. The Montreal Canadiens have honored 18 players through 15 numbers, the most in the NHL, by having their names and numbers floating the rafters of the Montreal Forum and eventually the Bell Center.

Amazingly, there are still a good number of players that are deserving of such treatment. While modern players such as Saku Koivu, Andrei Markov and perhaps Carey Price might get recognition someday, there are players of an older generation that are more deserving at this point.
The Canadiens have always used the prerequisite that a player must be part of the Hall of Fame in order for their number to be retired, so we will do the same.
Without further ado, here are three players that should have had their numbers retired already.