Canada’s season doesn’t really start with a banner in Raleigh. When the Toronto Maple Leafs host the Montreal Canadiens at 7 p.m. ET on Sept. 29, the pre-game tape on icehockeypredictions.com sits beside a century of meetings, not a slogan. That’s the right way to read opening night in this country.
Puck drop is 7 p.m. ET, per the NHL’s 2026-27 schedule release, with Sportsnet and TVA Sports on the call and 84 games still ahead. Carolina raises a Cup banner at 5. Then this. In this country, that’s the start.
Why this Toronto vs Montreal derby still sets season opener trends
The first NHL meeting was Dec. 26, 1917: Toronto Arenas 7, Montreal 5. The Leafs name came later. The argument didn’t. Three years after that first game, as the IIHF’s Olympic history notes, Canada joined the federation that still calls this country hockey’s motherland. They’re past 850 games now. Montreal still leads the all-time ledger, roughly 416-336-88-14, and holds the playoff edge. Five Stanley Cup Finals. The last one was 1967. Montreal’s last Cup is 1993. That’s why a Tuesday in late September still feels heavier than one in Columbus.
The season opener trends here are stubborn. No two clubs have opened the NHL year against each other more often. Through 2025-26 they’d done it 23 times; Vancouver–Calgary sat next, at 12. They’d also lined up on night one for six straight seasons. Two Original Six clubs, same division, same country. Networks know what gets watched.
The last three openers, without the myth-making
The recent scores are the useful part:
- Oct. 11, 2023 — Toronto 6, Montreal 5 (SO). Auston Matthews scored a hat trick, including his 300th NHL goal.
- Oct. 9, 2024 — Montreal 1, Toronto 0. Sam Montembeault stopped 48 shots. I still think about that one more than I should.
- Oct. 8, 2025 — Toronto 5, Montreal 2. Morgan Rielly’s winner, then empty-netters from Matthews and William Nylander. Matthews’ 13th opening-night goal, tied with Alex Ovechkin among active players.
Last year’s shared opener: Montreal spent a lot of the night in Toronto’s end, then lost the third. Martin St. Louis wanted more shots. Craig Berube called the puck play “the root of our problems.” Toronto’s problems got louder. Montreal’s shots started going in.
Maple Leafs vs. Canadiens at Maple Leaf Gardens, March 6, 1938. Photo: BAnQ / Wikimedia Commons.
Auston Matthews, the Toronto Maple Leafs, and NHL predictions vs the Montreal Canadiens
Last spring flipped the power. The Canadiens finished 48-24-10, 106 points, third in the Atlantic. Nick Suzuki put up 101 points (29 goals, 72 assists). Cole Caufield scored 51. Lane Hutson had 78 points from the blue line. Ivan Demidov added 62 as a first-year regular. They beat Tampa Bay and Buffalo in seven-game series, then lost the Eastern Conference Final to Carolina in five. Nineteen playoff games.
The Leafs went 32-36-14, 78 points, eighth in the Atlantic, and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2016. Goals against: 295. Matthews played 60 games and finished 27-26-53. Nylander still produced (79 points in 65). John Tavares led the club with 31 goals. The home-opener streak — 10 straight wins since 2016-17 — is the one Toronto fact that still looks sturdy. Streaks like that rarely survive a 78-point season.
Matthews versus Montreal is not a vibe. It’s 29 goals and 18 assists in 39 career games. He scores in this building, against this sweater. The question on Sept. 29 isn’t whether he gets looks. It’s whether a Leafs structure that leaked all of 2025-26 can live with Suzuki’s line for 60 minutes, and whether Hutson is allowed to walk the puck out the way he did in May.
Serious NHL predictions have to start from last year’s table, not from 2022’s Atlantic. Montreal just played into May. Toronto got dumped in San Jose in early April. If you’re still treating the Toronto vs Montreal derby as Leafs-by-default, you’re a year late.
What hockey betting predictions actually track
Read the markets as information, not as a pitch. The hockey betting predictions that actually move on this opener follow a short list:
- Special teams. Both clubs were messy last Oct. 8; Montreal scored short-handed, then faded 6-on-5.
- Matthews’ shot volume against Hutson’s gap control.
- Whether Toronto can keep it a one-goal game past the second. Last season, they often couldn’t.
- Montreal’s rest versus Toronto’s home urgency. One club arrives with conference-final tape. The other arrives with something to prove.
Four meetings are on the 2026-27 slate. This is the first. It won’t decide the Atlantic. It will show whether Montreal’s spring was a jump, and whether Matthews’ Leafs still have a night in them. Watch the first 10 minutes. That’s usually when this stops being history and starts being a hockey game.
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