Not sure if you’re being serious or sarcastic…? In case you are sarcastic…
Signing players to C-Forms was a first come, first served thing - Montreal was just better at getting scouts out and signing players very early. It wasn’t like it was a secret: nothing stopped other teams from getting there first.
Every other team in the league had the monopoly chance to sign local players first (in the 50-mile radius), same as the Habs did. Being butthurt that your team’s region didn’t have as many kids playing hockey isn’t the Habs’ fault.
Montreal protected 14 players through the special draft that gave them easier access to players in the rest of Québec. Not a single one of those players in the first handful of years ever played in the NHL. The Canadiens had the intelligence to set up a farm team system of players that they signed to C-form contracts, but there was nothing whatsoever preventing other teams from doing the same. This system netted the Habs a total of three players, the only significant one being Réjean Houle.
I suppose you could say that they acquired Jean Beliveau in this manner too; though he didn’t want to turn pro and the Habs gambled on buying a whole senior league to pretty much force him to do it.
So…we are really only talking about four players, two of which were pretty much nobodies. Hardly the only contributors to Cup wins, don’t you think?
The Leafs also had a massive farm system - do you think their Cup wins are less valid too?
People can try and delegitimatize their Cup winnings over it, but at the end of the day, the Montreal Canadiens are still inscribed on it, and if the Penguins can be proud of their 2009 win, we can be proud of the Habs’ 1916, 1924, 1930, 1931, 1944, 1946, 1953, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1965, 1966, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1986, 1993 wins too.
