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The Montreal Canadiens’ fairy tale run might actually be out of a fairy tale

Montreal Canadiens players celebrate a win around team mascot Youppi after defeating the Tampa Bay Lightning at Bell Centre. (Mandatory Credit: David Kirouac-Imagn Images)

Some might call the run that the Montreal Canadiens are on something out of a fairy tale. A team in last place in the conference suddenly starting to win and ending up in a playoff fight (and, at least as of Wednesday morning, are in a playoff spot).

As a father of a toddler right now, my brain is wired in a certain way. She’s currently on a kick of watching Beauty and the Beast, and I think we’re up to three full viewings over the last four days and that doesn’t even include the additional requests for music at bedtime, or watching clips on YouTube.

So after Tuesday’s win over the Tampa Bay Lightning, I still had a song in my head and there’s one part in particular that struck me.

Well, who’d have thought?
Well, bless my soul
Well, who’d have known?
Well, who indeed?
And who’d have guessed they’d come together on their own?

It’s so peculiar
We’ll wait and see
A few days more
There may be something there that wasn’t there before

Something There, from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast

The main story of Beauty and the Beast itself has very little to connect to hockey or the Canadiens but there’s a specific angle through the characters who sing this part of the song that is fitting.

They are two characters stuck in a curse they had nothing to do with watching people try and get to a place they have yet to reach. If Lumière and Mrs. Potts aren’t sports fans, they’re living the experience watching Belle and the Beast trying to fall in love.

As soon as Belle walked in the castle, they still had hope she would be the one to break the curse, but it wasn’t always smooth sailing. They’ve seen the Beast messily try to eat and end up covered in his own slop. They’ve seen a Belle who was scared, in her shell, and initially thought of as a prisoner. But then, through it all, the hope was repaid. They were falling in love. They were figuring it out. The path out of the cursed situation they found themselves in suddenly had a light at the end of the tunnel.

Even the most optimistic fans of the Canadiens would have expected the light to come next season, with maybe a bit of a run to justify another step forward. What has happened with the Canadiens since the middle of December exceeded those expectations to the point where it would be a genuine disappointment to many should they now fall short.

Largely, this run has come from the players and coaches themselves. You could point to the addition of Jakub Dobeš and Alexandre Carrier, or the return of Patrik Laine, and certainly they helped, but it doesn’t happen without everyone else stepping up as well.

There’s still a lot of work to do, and a lot of time left and there are plenty of other teams trying to pull them from the top of the castle or stab them in the leg (if this seems like a niche reference to a specific scene, go back to the part where I said I have watched this movie a lot over the last few days). There are also setbacks, like the loss against the Toronto Maple Leafs but still they move on.

Watching the Canadiens now is refreshing. This is the best regular season run the team has had this late in a season for a long time, and might be the most fun many young fans have ever had in the regular season. You can’t help but feel when you’re watching this team that there’s something special there.

Call it hope. Call it magic. Call it belief. Whatever you call it, there’s definitely something there that wasn’t before.

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