Events

Bruins and Canadiens to face off for the first time since pre-pandemic

Boston and Montreal didn't see each other last season, so it's the start of a new era as they renew their bitter rivalry.

A handful of Bruins and Canadiens players scuffle at center ice during the second period of Sunday's contest. Angela Spagna, Bruins Daily

By Dave D'Onofrio

1 minute to read

By the time they drop the puck at TD Garden for this one, it will have been 21 months and two days since the Bruins last faced off with their bitter rivals. After the 2020 season was interrupted by Covid, the Bruins and Canadiens didn’t see each other in the Toronto bubble, nor did they play at all last season, when the NHL’s Canadian operations skated exclusively north of the border.

In the meantime, the Habs fired former Bruins coach Claude Julien, then nearly won another Stanley Cup — reaching the finals before getting lit up by the Lightning — but it doesn’t look as though they’ve fully found their way back to form. Montreal opened the season by winning just three of its first 11 games, both struggling to score and defensively showing the impact of playing without goalie Carey Price, who sat the first part of the year while participating in the league’s player assistance program.

Regardless of their records, though, the rivalry between these teams tends to result in intense, emotional battles, and it’s a worthwhile ticket under any circumstances. It’ll be interesting to see how much of the pre-existing vitriol has held up even while waiting almost two years between tussles, and after so much has changed on both sides — but at the very least this will be an affair between Atlantic Division competitors, neither of which wants to fall too far behind the elite teams they’re already chasing.