Guy Lafleur, Carey Price, Cole Caufield and The Greatest Game

Okay, so a team that has won 24 Stanley Cups has had plenty of "Greatest Games", and each person has their own definition of the best game they have ever seen or heard of. Really, any of the 24 games that clinched one of their Stanley Cup wins are more impactful than this one. Guy Lafleur and Carey Price have had their fair share of fantastic performances and hopefully Cole Caufield will have his share of his own in the future.

But, there was something special in the air of April 29th, 2022 in the Bell Centre in Montreal.

82 Games Earlier

The Montreal Canadiens have been stuck at 24 Stanley Cups since 1993, but they came close in 2021, one of the strangest NHL seasons ever.

The Canadiens snuck through the Canadian division as the last seed, made a 3-1 series comeback against the heavily favoured Toronto Maple Leafs, swept the Winnipeg Jets, and beat the Vegas Golden Knights and the refs to make it to the Stanley Cup Final against the Tampa Bay Lightning.

If I was talking about the most cathartic game in recent memory, I would pick game 6 against the Vegas Golden Knights. After terrible refereeing throughout the entire series, and the complete lack of faith in the Canadiens, Artturi Lehkonen pushing the Habs through to the Final was a genuinely cheer-worthy moment.

However, the Canadiens could not stand against the machine that were the Tampa Bay Lightning, and they were quickly dispatched in just 5 games. And that probably was because two of their best players were quite badly injured.

First of all was the captain, Shea Weber, the Canadiens' latest inductee into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Weber was dealing with issues with his left foot, a serious injury that he played through during the whole playoff run, and would ultimately retire him, never playing a game after the 2021 season.

The second was Carey Price. Price, the backbone of the Montreal Canadiens for a decade, was also dealing with his own serious injury, this one to his knee and meniscus. While Price would play after the 2021 playoffs, and we will get to that in a bit, it was effectively the end of his career.

And with those two, arguably the two most important players on the team at the time, completely missing off the ice for the 2021-22 season, the season quickly fell apart. The Canadiens, a relatively young team with a healthy mix of veteran presence, like Mike Hoffman and Jeff Petry, were unable to keep the puck out of their own net and they fell in the standings.

To say it was rough is an understatement. 2021-22 was arguably the team's worst season ever, having the most goals scored against them, least wins, most losses and least points.

So by the time April 29th came along, the team was firmly stuck in the basement and facing their polar opposites, the President's Trophy winning Florida Panthers.