Some people say that Montreal Canadiens fans have been used to winning and should have higher standards. Former general manager Serge Savard has been quoted saying he was finding it tough to see fans cheering on the team when they are losing, but times have changed, and legendary goaltender Ken Dryden explains:
I know the fans are looking for special, and in almost any other city, being very good is enough and so if you are on the verge of very good and disappoint and you can’t project the fans as to going beyond very good, that’s what gets fans down, when they can’t see on the ice something that will be better tomorrow. You don’t need to win the Cup each year; you need to know that you’re better than you were and you’re foreseeably on the way to something a lot better. And I think that’s what the fans are sensing, they’re sensing the right ambitions and the right ambitions throughout the whole organization.
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About the fact the team hasn’t won the Cup in 31 years, Dryden says:
It’s amazing, that’s the first part, and it’s amazing that there has not been a Canadian team that has won a Stanley Cup in 31 years and that is beyond belief. […] From 1956 to 1979, which is probably 24 seasons, the Canadiens won 15 Stanley Cup in 24 years. Before that time, the Canadiens were not the legendary Canadiens, I mean they were good, very good perhaps in the early 50s, but before that, they were another team and it was really starting in the early 50s that hitting their stride and after 1956 on, that’s when the legendary Canadiens became that. And then 15 in 24 years. So, you come to expect a Cup, you assume a Cup and you certainly don’t assume that it’s going to be a long time between.
But the goaltending legend doesn’t blame the organization for that:
That’s the way the rest of the world works and it’s more that way in every sport, every year of where you have more teams in leagues and you have more parity in all of the sports so it’s harder to win a Championship. It just happened that the Canadiens in particular and the Leafs to some extent had the chance to become extra special at a certain time in the history of the NHL and because there were only two Canadian teams out of six teams you know, you had a pretty good chance of winning
That’s what’s going on in a nutshell. Yes, Montreal fans were treated to a lot of championships, but it just couldn’t happen today. There are more teams, and there are more good teams as well….