Generations of Canadiens fans loving this playoff run: 'Every win is magical' - ESPN

MONTREAL — Consider some of Earth's utmost cases of a civic euphoria spawned from the peerless force of sports. Daydream of Paris on the night of Sunday, July 12, 1998, just after the happy shock of France 3, Brazil 0. Think of Philadelphia on Feb. 4, 2018 (Super Bowl LII), or the gigantic Mumbai on April 2, 2011 (Cricket World Cup), or, best yet, Johannesburg on June 24, 1995, and a stadium boasting both a Rugby World Cup final and Nelson Mandela.

Now, wander into Montreal in May 2026 and find a monthlong rival to all of the above, a great city gone greater, as if its bloodstream long filled with little Canadiens logos has imported a fresh dose of electricity. Hear one of the world's great sounds on a Monday night as it whooshes outward and upward from an arena where 21,000 people have gone for a Game 7 watch party and know an overtime goal has occurred even before the broadcast you're watching has finished its several-second delay. Hear one of the world's great non-sounds while hopscotching through 12 bars in four neighborhoods during a Game 1 on a Thursday night: that of pubs packed with people so immersed that the only sound is the low hum of the play-by-play coming from all the screens.

Feel Montreal as the place-to-be on Earth right now, as its magic feelings include something it seldom got to feel while it won a peerless 24 Stanley Cups including an absurd 18 of the 41 between 1953 and 1993: surprise. Watch it exhibit love for an irresistible youngest team in the league that supposedly had this kind of push earmarked for later in its multiseason agenda. Instead, this team has pushed all the way to a giddy Game 3 in the Eastern Conference finals, tied 1-1 entering Monday night's home contest against Carolina. And