For fourteen seasons, Montreal had two NHL teams, and they hated each other.
The Montreal Maroons were the anglophone counterpart to the francophone Canadiens, and the rivalry between them split the city along language, class, and neighborhood lines. They won two Stanley Cups. They built the Montreal Forum. And then the Great Depression killed them.
Why Montreal Needed a Second Team
By the early 1920s, the Montreal Canadiens had established themselves as the team of French-speaking Montreal. That left a market gap: Montreal's substantial English-speaking population, concentrated in the western part of the city, wanted a team of their own.
In 1924, the NHL granted an expansion franchise to a group of Montreal businessmen. The team was officially the Montreal Professional Hockey Club, but they became universally known as the Maroons for the color of their sweaters.
To house the new team, ownership built the Montreal Forum at the corner of Atwater and Sainte-Catherine. It opened on November 29, 1924, and would go on to become the most storied hockey building in the world. Here is the great irony of Montreal hockey history: the Forum was built for the Maroons, not the Canadiens. The Canadiens were tenants.
The 1926 Stanley Cup
The Maroons were good almost immediately. In only their second season, 1925-26, they won the NHL championship and then defeated the Victoria Cougars of the Western Hockey League to win the Stanley Cup.
It was the last time a non-NHL team would ever compete for the Cup. After 1926 the WHL folded and the Stanley Cup became the exclusive property of the NHL. The Montreal Maroons are the answer to a trivia question that will never change: the last team to win the Cup in an inter-league final.
The team was led by goaltender Clint Benedict, who that season became the first NHL goalie to wear a face mask (a leather contraption he tried after breaking his nose, then abandoned because it obstructed his vision), and by Nels Stewart, a powerful center who won the Hart Trophy as league MVP.
The Rivalry
The Canadiens-Maroons rivalry was one of the fiercest in early NHL history because it was not really about hockey.
It was about language. It was about which Montreal was the real Montreal. Canadiens fans were largely French-speaking, working-class, and concentrated in the east end. Maroons fans were largely English-speaking, wealthier, and from the west end. Games between the two teams at the Forum were genuine cultural events with a hostile edge.
Both teams eventually shared the Forum, which meant the rivalry played out in the same building, on the same ice, in front of crowds divided against themselves.
The 1935 Stanley Cup and the Fall
The Maroons won their second Stanley Cup in 1935, sweeping the Toronto Maple Leafs three games to none in the final. It was the high point of the franchise's second era and should have secured their future.
Instead, the Great Depression destroyed them.
Montreal simply could not support two NHL franchises during an economic collapse. Attendance dropped at both buildings, but the Maroons had less institutional loyalty to draw on. Their fanbase, while real, was smaller and more fragile than the Canadiens' deep cultural connection to French Montreal.
The Maroons finished last in the NHL in 1937-38 with a record of 12-30-6. On June 22, 1938, the franchise suspended operations. They asked the NHL for permission to relocate to St. Louis and were denied. The team never played again and was formally dissolved in 1947.
The Legacy
**They built the Forum.** Every Canadiens banner, every Rocket Richard goal, every Howie Morenz memorial, all of it happened in a building constructed for the Montreal Maroons. That is a legacy that outlived the franchise by 58 years.
**They won the last inter-league Stanley Cup.** The 1926 championship is a permanent marker in hockey history.
**They proved one-city rivalries burn hottest.** The Canadiens-Maroons dynamic was a template for what would later happen between Montreal and Quebec City: hockey as a proxy for cultural identity.
Two teams. One city. One Forum. Only one of them is still playing.
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Montreal Maroons 1924-1938 | They Built the Forum | Hockey Tee – Odd Man Rush