There is an understandable excitement around the Montreal Canadiens these days. They’ve won six straight games and are on the verge of punching their ticket to the Stanley Cup Playoffs. They’re young, they’re exciting, and it’s hard not to like what they’re putting together.
And now they’re about to inject one of their top prospects into the lineup with the late-season addition of 2024 first-rounder Ivan Demidov.
When you look at the Canadiens of today, it’s impossible not to look back at the Vancouver Canucks coming out of the bubble playoffs in the summer of 2020. Not even five years ago, you could have created a very similar looking list of players and prospects all 25 years of age and under:
Bo Horvat
Brock Boeser
Elias Pettersson
Quinn Hughes
Thatcher Demko
Adam Gaudette
Nikolay Goldobin
There was still a glimmer of hope that both Jake Virtanen and Olli Juolevi would put disappointing starts to their professional careers behind them and somehow find their way to becoming productive contributors. And the club had 2019 top 10 pick Vasily Podkolzin and second-round steal Nils Höglander on the way.
Look out hockey world, here come the Vancouver Canucks.
As history shows, those young Canucks of 2020 – all of them except Horvat getting their first taste of NHL playoff hockey, albeit in the most bizarre setting during a global pandemic and with no fans in the stands – won their qualifying play-in round against Minnesota. They then knocked off the reigning Stanley Cup champion St. Louis Blues. And from there threw a true scare into the heavily favoured Vegas Golden Knights – pushing them to the limit in a seven-game series.
The Canucks emerged from the bubble as one of the team’s to keep an eye on and it seemed inevitable that the core group would build from the positive bubble experience and grow together into a legitimate Stanley Cup contender.
And here we are, wondering where it all went wrong. And how it all got away from the organization in relative short order.
And that’s where the Montreal Canadiens would be wise to consider the Canucks as a case study.
The Habs have assembled an incredible crop of young talent. But that’s the easy part of the equation. Now it’s going to be interesting to see how that organization goes about the business of surrounding the likes of Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Lane Hutson and Juraj Slafkovsky with the pieces necessary to ascend the NHL’s competitive ladder.
Weeks after the Canucks surprised themselves and the hockey world in the bubble, they let Chris Tanev, Jacob Markstrom, Tyler Toffoli and Troy Stecher all walk as unrestricted free agents in an attempt to save money. From there, they began making ill-advised moves, took every conceivable shortcut in roster construction and then, as things started to slip away from them, allowed a general manager to pull off a desperation trade in an attempt to save his job. While Conor Garland has panned out as part of that deal, the Canucks will have the bought out Oliver Ekman-Larsson on the books through the end of this decade and, of course, that came at the cost of a top ten pick that turned out to be Dylan Guenther. That stings even more now when you consider the Canucks lack of elite offensive producers.
None of this should scare the Montreal Canadiens or their loyal fans. But there certainly are lessons for all hockey clubs to take from the demise of the Canucks once mouth-watering stable of young stars and prospects.
The Habs legitimately have something good going. And should for years to come. 
But ask the Canucks of five years ago if promise and potential comes with any guarantees. It’s going to be worth watching to see if Montreal can get it right where the Canucks made far too many missteps turning all those building blocks into a pile of rubble in their hopes to push for the franchise’s first Stanley Cup.
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