After the Montreal Canadiens officially punched their ticket to the 2026 NHL playoffs a few weeks back, local hockey fans have had one question on their minds: Who are they going to play in Round 1?
Well, we finally have an answer.
But it may not be the one fans were hoping for.
Given how tight this year's Atlantic Division race has been, the Habs three most likely opponents were the Tampa Bay Lightning, Buffalo Sabres, and Boston Bruins.
But since Buffalo secured the top spot in the division on Monday night, Montreal will now play the Tampa Bay Lightning in a best-of-seven series to kick off the postseason.
If the matchup sounds familiar, it's because it is. For those who don't recall, the Canadiens went on an epic postseason run back in 2021, heading all the way to the Stanley Cup Final.
But because of the way the league's divisions were structured that year (due to COVID restrictions), the Habs had to face another Eastern Conference team in the Final. That team was none other than the Lightning, who destroyed the Canadiens in five games to claim their second straight championship.
Now Montreal, fresh off a complete rebuild, will get a chance to flip the script on its bitter rivals.
There's also a chance the Habs get to do it on home ice.
Montreal heads into the final day of the regular season sitting one point ahead of Tampa in the standings. If they win their last game, they can claim home ice advantage for the series — which, if you've been inside a packed Bell Centre lately, is not a small thing.
The on-ice numbers back up the optimism, too. This year's Montreal team has been genuinely fun to watch. Five players cracked 60 points. Cole Caufield scored 50 goals. Nick Suzuki hit the 100-point mark. And the goaltending, which for a long stretch of this rebuild was the thing keeping fans up at night, has been quietly excellent down the stretch.
Tampa is still Tampa, though. Nikita Kucherov is one of the best players in the world on any given night. Brayden Point is the kind of forward who makes your life miserable in a seven-game series. And Andrei Vasilevskiy is still Vasilevskiy — a goaltender capable of single-handedly flipping a series on its head if he gets hot at the right moment.
That said, this isn't the same Lightning team that ran through the league a few years back. Losing Steven Stamkos and Mikhail Sergachev has taken some of the teeth out of their roster, and for the first time in a while, the oddsmakers actually like Montreal's chances more than Tampa's.
The experience gap is real, though. Tampa has been here before — many times — and that kind of institutional playoff knowledge doesn't just disappear. If Vasilevskiy channels his 2021 self, when he was practically a brick wall, the Habs are going to have to work for every single goal.
But this Montreal team isn't the one that got outclassed five years ago. The rebuild is done. The pieces are in place. And for the first time in what feels like forever, heading into a playoff series doesn't feel like hoping for a miracle.
No matter what, it'll be fun to watch.
The 2026 NHL playoffs are scheduled to begin on Saturday, April 18, 2026.
