Montreal Canadiens
There’s sports fans, and there’s Habs fans. We feel it’s important to differentiate between the two. Being a Montreal Canadiens supporter isn’t some casual pact you enter into. It’s scribbled onto legal pads at kitchen tables, it’s passed down through family lines woven into generational Stanley Cup lore and it’s tattooed on your heart and soul through every miserable playoff loss and glorious comeback win. When you’re shopping for a gift for a person who bleeds bleu, blanc et rouge you want to get it right. And when you get it wrong, they notice.
We compiled this list because we noticed. Every. Single. Time. You go too general and it could apply to any team across the country. You double down on officially licensed merch and it just becomes something that collects dust in a display case. That’s not good enough for us. We wanted gifts with meaning. Gifts that will matter to someone who gets verklempt over footage of Henri Richard, who can recall where they were when Patrick Roy cried, and who proudly displays memorabilia from before they were even born.
Each and every one of these items was hand-selected with that someone in mind. Not the casual sports watcher. Not your community centre pickup game goalie. We mean the die-hard. The person who already has the jersey and doesn’t need another sweater. We wanted stuff that was put together with some care or attention to what the Canadiens have meant for so many people rather than simply throwing on the team logo because you saw it was available.
Those things mean. The Montreal Canadiens have more history than any sports team in North America. Between their 24 Stanley Cup championships, hosting the greatest players hockey has ever seen and a city that devoutly worships at the altar of hockey in a way that makes other fan-bases look tame, being a Canadiens supporter means something. When you’re buying a gift for that kind of person, that weight means something to you too. It raises the bar. When they receive that gift, they will have an opinion on it.
We believe what you’ll find here meets that high bar. These are what we would pick for ourselves or a loved-one who truly bleeds bleu, blanc et rouge. It’s the only standard we know how to judge by.