The Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs will drop the puck on another season by staring across the red line at each other. Tuesday’s opener at Scotiabank Arena is the 24th time the franchises have met to launch both of their campaigns, and it marks a seventh straight season with this matchup on the first night.
National broadcasts in Canada begin at 7 p.m. ET on Sportsnet and TVA Sports. It is Game 1 of an 84-game regular-season slate for each Original Six club as both enter their 109th NHL seasons with very different recent paths but plenty of attention on their rosters.
Quick facts
- Montreal and Toronto are meeting in mutual season openers for the 24th time.
- The Maple Leafs own a 14-8-1 record in those opening-night meetings; Montreal is 9-11-3.
- This will be the 777th regular-season game between the franchises since the NHL began in 1917.
- Montreal leads the all-time regular-season series 370-304-14, with 88 ties from before overtime and shootouts.
- Auston Matthews’ Maple Leafs have won 10 consecutive home openers since his 2016-17 debut.
Montreal is arriving with a higher target than simply reaching the playoff bracket. Martin St. Louis guided a young Canadiens group through three rounds of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs, and the room is led by captain Nick Suzuki, who posted 101 points last season, and 50-goal winger Cole Caufield.
Lane Hutson, the 2025 Calder Trophy winner, remains a major piece on the blue line. The Canadiens also added veteran forward Chris Kreider, while their goaltending gives them a stable base as they chase the organization’s 25th Stanley Cup and first since 1993.
Montreal has won 23 NHL championships, plus the 1916 title it captured in the National Hockey Association.
Toronto is coming off a season without playoff hockey and has reached the second round only twice since 2005-06. Its last Stanley Cup parade came in 1967, but the building will have fresh energy with No. 1 pick Gavin McKenna expected to make his NHL regular-season debut against the Canadiens.
Matthews and William Nylander remain the offensive headliners for a Leafs club now coached by Jim Hiller. Toronto also brought in Sergei Bobrovsky to strengthen its crease, adding a veteran goaltender to a roster looking to take a step forward after missing the postseason.
A rivalry with opening-night history
Toronto has hosted 14 of the previous 23 shared openers, using Mutual Street Arena, Maple Leaf Gardens and now Scotiabank Arena. Montreal’s home dates in the series were played at Mount Royal Arena, the Montreal Forum and Bell Centre.
The Leafs have outscored the Canadiens 71-64 in these season-starting games. Toronto posted three straight wins from 1921 through 1923, won four in a row from 2010 through 2013, and put together another three-game run between 2018 and 2021 that included two overtime decisions.
Montreal’s only three-game streak in this particular setting stretched from 1924 to 1960. The clubs split their most recent four season-openers, played from 2022 through 2025.
Goaltenders have supplied some of the sharpest results. Jacques Plante blanked Toronto 2-0 in 1955 and 5-0 in 1960 at the Forum, while Sam Montembeault turned aside 48 shots in Montreal’s 1-0 victory in 2024.
James Reimer recorded Toronto’s shutout in the series, making the saves in a 2-0 home win in 2011.
The first shared opener came nearly 105 years ago, on Dec. 17, 1921. Toronto was still known as the St. Patricks when it beat Montreal 5-2 at Mutual Street Arena behind two goals apiece from Babe Dye and Corb Denneny, plus another from Ken Randall.
Louis Berlinguette and Newsy Lalonde scored for the Canadiens. St. Pats netminder Ivan “Mike” Mitchell got the better of Montreal goalie Georges Vezina in a game that carried plenty of edge.
Both sides received 26 penalty minutes. Denneny and Dye were cut by high sticks, and Denneny was carried off during the second period after a collision with the goal posts, though he returned to the game.
Late in the third, Denneny struck Lalonde after an exchange between the two. Denneny was removed for the remainder of the night, while Lalonde received a three-minute penalty.
Ken Dryden, the Hall of Fame Canadiens goaltender who later served as Maple Leafs president, once described the matchup as rooted in both city and culture. He pointed to the 1960s, when both clubs were strong at once, as the kind of moment that gives the rivalry its greatest force.
Tuesday brings another edition with Suzuki and Matthews wearing the captain’s C, Caufield coming off a 50-goal year, and McKenna stepping into his first NHL regular-season game. There are 83 games remaining after this one, but neither side will be treating the opener like just another date on the schedule.
