The Iconoclast said:And how many times have YOU seen the Canadiesn take the cup for a spin around the rink? Its that attitude that made me turn my back on the Montreal Canadiens and find another team to cheer for. The fans are so wrapped up in a bunch of garbage that happened before the league was actually a league. What happened prior to 1967 has a huge asterisk beside it. Winning championships in a six team league with the table slanted in your direction is nothing to crow about, so 14 of those rings are really meaningless in the context of today's league. In reality you could also knock off a couple more as the Canadiens had to beat an expansion team to to take the prize (the eqivalent of beating Columbus last year). The Canadiens are truely a storied franchise, but many of those stories are nothing but fables and legend any more. They are applicable in todays NHL and don't mean a thing. Unless of course you want to recognize the fact that Toronto is the second most "storied" team in the league! What happened prior to 1970 is really out of context and I wouldn't brag too hard about it. After all, none of the teams you likely wish to put down were in existance genius.
Say what you want, but Montreal has still won more cups than anyone else since 1970. Not to mention more cups before 1970 than anyone else has won in total. If you want to downplay the importance of history in today's game, fine, but to dismiss 61 years of Montreal's storied history as a "bunch of garbage", you need help. And as a Montreal fan, I'm glad you left.
Toronto and Phoenix/Winnipeg are the only two of the "Original 21" teams that haven't been to the finals at all since 1967. Montreal has gone 11 times since then. Trying to lump Montreal in with Toronto serves no purpose.