While it didn’t end the way they’d hoped, the Montreal Canadiens just pulled off one of the great underdog runs in NHL history. They went from finishing 18th and going into the playoffs as an afterthought all the way to the final, and finished just four wins short of doing the unthinkable. It was pretty amazing.
It also wasn’t especially rare in the modern era, and that’s where this gets a bit tricky if you’re a Habs fan looking toward the future. For reasons I’m not quite clear on, the NHL tends to serve up one of these underdog runs to the Stanley Cup final every few years, including some featuring teams that were bigger longshots than the Canadiens.