The NHL, on almost all levels, work like the tides of the ocean. Whether it's conferences, divisions, teams, or players themselves, things are good for a while, then they go bad for a few years, and then they get good again. The Montreal Canadiens' tide is coming, while the Eastern Conference superpowers are starting to ebb.
Now, this isn't a perfect analogy. You have teams like the Buffalo Sabres, who haven't had a high tide in a decade or more. Or the myriad of failed franchises born in the low tide, and never reaching the shores of victory, see the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Coyotes franchise, or the Atlanta Thrashers.
But there is a clear pattern: 1.) be bad and rebuild, 2.) be good and win. 3.) get old and be bad. Rinse and repeat. The Montreal Canadiens are starting step #2 and should be there for years to come.
But the interesting thing is that conferences do the same thing too. Or even regions. I remember a few years ago when the California road trip was an automatic 0-3 against the Kings, Sharks and Ducks. Now, it's the exact opposite.
But, back to the Conferences. If you look at the past Stanley Cup winners, the Eastern Conference has had a pretty decent stranglehold since 2016. The Penguins won the Cup twice in a row in 2016 and 2017, and the Washington Capitals won the next year. In 2020, the Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup twice in a row, and now the Florida Panthers have won the last two Stanley Cups.
In that time, the only Western Conference teams to win the Cup were the St. Louis Blues in 2019, the Colorado Avalanche in 2022 and the Vegas Golden Knights in 2023. That means that the Eastern Conference won 7 of the last 10 Stanley Cups.
But, if you look at the time between 2007 and 2015, the Western Conference won all but two Cups (the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2009 and the Boston Bruins in 2011). The Conferences go up and down every couple of years, and the Eastern Conference is heading for a down-swing.
Tampa Bay won two straight Stanley Cups, but they are already on their way down. Tampa Bay was good for a long time, but couldn't get over the hump for a long time, so their downfall was pretty quick after their success. Andrei Vasilevskiy is 30 already, Kucherov is 32, and Hedman is 34. And the team hasn't been out of the first round in the past three years.
The Florida Panthers are all that right now, as all their stars are in their prime, but in a few years, that will be a different story. Who knows how many seasons of high-level play a 36-year-old Bobrovsky has in him, as well as 36-year-old Brad Marchand and the core of Bennett, Ekblad and Barkov all entering their 30s.
The Toronto Maple Leafs, Carolina Hurricanes, Washington Capitals and New York Rangers all never made the peak, and will be aging rapidly, some of them are already low in the downswing.
But the Montreal Canadiens? In a conference in free-fall, the Habs are poised to rise above it all.
The Canadiens have one of the best young cores in the entire league. The NHL released their list of the best players under 23, and the Montreal Canadiens have the most players on that list: Lane Hutson, Juraj Slafkovsky, Ivan Demidov and Zachary Bolduc.
And that doesn't include players that are just a bit over the age cut-off, like Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Noah Dobson and Kaiden Guhle, who are all in their mid twenties. And the prospects who haven't made the NHL yet, like Jacob Fowler and David Reinbacher.
And there isn't much competition for the Canadiens in the Eastern Conference for up-and-comers. The Buffalo Sabres, as mentioned above, don't have any signs of breaking out of their forever slump, and the Ottawa Senators have a young core now, but they are still middling and don't have much of a strong pipeline to draw upon anymore.
The rest of the conference is in various forms of rebuilding or falling apart. Both New York teams have hit new lows, the Bruins are completely broken, and Columbus is in the same boat as Buffalo.
There will be many years where Montreal will be at the top of the Eastern Conference, and will have a cake walk through the first round or two of the playoffs. It's the best possible position to be in, and we can expect many deep playoff runs from this group for a long time to come.