Former Canadiens foe speaks out about rivalry with Bruins

It's unfortunate that the Montreal Canadiens and Boston Bruins rivalry doesn't have the same pop as it did in the past. Most of us are able to remember when the Canadiens and Bruins played in so many playoff series through the early 2010s and 2000s, and others are old enough to remember all the heated matchups in the 1900s. However, as Tuukka Rask put it on a recent episode of The Sick Podcast - Raw Knuckles with Chris Nilan, the rivalry is starting to lose some of that juice.

It isn't the fanbases or the players' fault that the rivalry is losing steam. It's challenging for a rivalry to keep the same heat when one team is rebuilding. The Bruins and Canadiens haven't been good at the same time since around the 2014 season when Montreal won 4-3 in the Eastern Conference semi-final.

The Bruins had a mini "retool" after that playoff series, and then the Canadiens went through their current rebuild, which has put the teams on opposite ends of the spectrum. The Canadiens now have more heated games with the Ottawa Senators, while the Bruins have been battling for years with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

""They had the centennial game here a few weeks ago... if that game was 10 years ago, the whole town, both cities would have been crazy about it but it wasn't the same feeling... might as well play against freaking Seattle Kraken""

Tuukka Rask

The memory of those heated playoff series is still there, and one day, we'll get another important Bruins-Habs game. However, it could be farther away than you think. The Bruins have been struggling this season, and it seems more likely than not that they could enter another retool/rebuild as the Canadiens begin to come out of their rebuild.

When will the next Bruins-Canadiens playoff series be? We know one person who wants that to happen soon: Tuukka Rask. The fanbase starves for a rival to hate, and the Canadiens have lost that in the rebuild. It's something that they've never lost before, as there's always been a natural rival on an equal playing field with the Canadiens throughout their history. As the Canadiens go through technically the first rebuild in the franchise's history, it's an underrated absence from the fanbase's experience.