MONTREAL-- Twenty-four Stanley Mug championship banners hang over Bell Centre ice, among 15 retired-number banners celebrating the 18 Montreal Canadiens Hall of Famers that used them with excellent distinction. On Saturday, the Canadiens played their 106th NHL home opener, a 3-2 triumph against the seeing Chicago Blackhawks. They followed that with a 5-2 loss to the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday and finish a three-game homestand Saturday against the Washington Capitals. The entertaining home opener adhered to a curtain-raising event that, by Canadiens criteria, was understated and a lot more simmer than sizzle. The fairly moderate discussion of team and players and a toned-down focus on the past was additional image of this team's modification in culture. Minas Panagiotakis/Getty ImagesMontreal Canadiens players lined up on Bell Centre ice complying with intros prior to the Oct. 14, 2023 home opener, the Chicago Blackhawks simply arriving on the ice. "I matured right here, I totally appreciate the Canadiens' background," general manager Kent Hughes informed NHL Trevor van Riemsdyk Jersey. com on Tuesday. "I expanded up in the 1970s and '80s. It almost became an initiation rite to view them win a Stanley Mug here. "I grew up playing with Larry Robinson's son and I think my brother played with Jacques Lemaire's boy. The history was constantly around us. I believe there's the balance below: the past and the assumptions of today and allowing this team to chart their own course. "There was no appearance on Saturday of the team's flaming torch, often shared by players in past ceremonies. The ice was not electronically fired, there were no unique results, gamers did not skate onto a rink shrouded by solidified carbon dioxide. Minas Panagiotakis/Getty ImagesMontreal Canadiens gamers salute Bell Centre followers following their 3-2 home-opener win on Oct. 14, 2023. The historic past was not disregarded, team legend Yvan Cournoyer opening up a video mosaic. However this event was regarding the present team, gamers skating out by position for their introductions-- goalies, defensemen and forwards complied with by captain Nick Suzuki and alternating captains Brendan Gallagher and Mike Matheson. Saluted in the stands and a suite during TV timeouts were Paul Byron, the preferred onward that introduced his retirement in September, his career ended prematurely by injury, then Carey Price, the winningest goalie in franchise business history who is unable to play as a result of an operatively fixed knee. But this video game, the intro to fans of the 2023-24 group, was essentially everything about the here and now and the future. Minas Panagiotakis/Getty ImagesCoach Martin St. Louis behind the Canadiens bench during the group's home opener. "It's great to have the history around us," Hughes said. "We've tried to unlock much more to our graduates Capitals Store. I really hope that a player or two will certainly connect with a graduate and that they can find out a lot more. Our gamers know this team has been really effective, yet they don't always value the history. "We think that item is very important yet it's not mosting likely to supersede what these people need to do. We need to concentrate on what we're attempting to construct below. "As a matter of fact, Gallagher and Tanner Pearson are the only players on the current roster who were to life in 1993, the last time the Canadiens won the Stanley Mug. Lost in the mists is journalism launch famously issued by Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau during the team's run of four consecutive champions from 1976-79: "The Canadiens' Stanley Mug parade will certainly follow the typical route. " Francois Lacasse/NHLI using Getty ImagesBrendan Gallagher takes the team's lantern from captain Shea Weber throughout 2019-20 home-opener events. The lantern, figuratively and actually, has actually belonged to this team's history for decades. "To you from stopping working hands we throw the torch be yours to hold it high.. "The flow showed in Bell Centre and the Canadiens' suv training facility clothing areas is from the World war rhyme "In Flanders Fields," written in Might 1915 by Canadian military police officer, doctor and poet John McCrae, a lieutenant colonel that fought, created and died in the Great Battle, catching pneumonia in France in 1918. Since 1952, the words have been presented over the Canadiens' dressing area stalls. They were placed there by then-general manager Frank Selke Sr. , that saw a profound significance in McCrae's words for his club, after that coached by Penis Irvin Sr. Francois Lacasse, Richard Wolowicz/Getty Images Sporting Activity ClassicMontreal Canadiens Jean Beliveau and Guy Lafleur with the group's torch throughout 2013-14 home-opener events. "In Flanders Area" has been basically sewn right into the Canadiens fabric for greater than seven decades; it will continue to be there relocating forward. But the torch was nowhere to be seen on Saturday in a ceremony that was created by the group's advertising division and approved without revision by the hockey operations team. "We receive memoranda from the Organization in terms of timing of pregame events, begin times for games, and factor to consider for the going to group," Hughes claimed. "You're stabilizing a lot of different things. We remained in arrangement that the emphasis must get on this group and this team of players and the training course they're attempting to chart. " Bruce Bennett/Getty ImagesCanadiens exec vice-president Jeff Gorton and GM Kent Hughes during the 2023 NHL Draft in Nashville. There will constantly be suggestions of and regard for Canadiens history, Hughes claimed, players walking past a display screen of 24 miniature Stanley Mug replicas on their method into the Bell Centre dressing space. "There is no disrespect to what's been completed or our background, much from it," he claimed. "It is essential. "He indicated gatherings the team arranges a few times per period, the idea of train Martin St. Louis to have little teams of players welcomed to socialize with graduates. "Marty has a wonderful idea, doing this," Hughes said. "If we brought the entire group in, the guys would stay amongst themselves. However bring three or four people in and spray them among the graduates, they have the chance to attach, to discover their tales and discover who they are. Dave Stubbs/NHL. comBell Centre ice is set digitally ablaze throughout 2019-20 home-opener ceremonies. "Marty says a whole lot, speaking with the team, 'They're your expectations for this team, they're not mine. I'm below to assist you create them yet inevitably it has to originate from within. It will be useless if it does not originate from within. ' "It depends on the present Canadiens, Hughes states, "to take possession of this way of reasoning and keep up it. "We really hope that they desire obtain to those heights and take it tip by step to win the Stanley Cup. It's their history now Nicolas Aube-Kubel Jersey. "Top picture: Montreal Canadiens Nick Suzuki is introduced to Bell Centre fans prior to his group's Oct. 14, 2023 home opener.