Once a villain in Montreal, Chris Kreider joins Habs ahead of training camp

“It’s not just a sport here. It’s a religion.”

Kreider has been on the receiving end of that fervour for more than a decade, gaining villain status in 2014 when the then-New York Rangers winger crashed into Carey Price and knocked the star goalie out of the Eastern Conference final.

Montreal’s fury, however, never gave Kreider pause when the Canadiens came calling aggressively with an offer.

Under a salary-cap crunch following the Leo Carlsson offer sheet, the Anaheim Ducks terminated Kreider’s $6.5-million contract last week, allowing the Canadiens to sign him over several other suitors.

A former 50-goal scorer, the six-foot-three, 232-pound Kreider remains an effective power forward after producing 22 goals and 28 assists in 75 games with Anaheim last season, his only one in Southern California.

“Montreal was pretty aggressive right out of the gate, and obviously there’s several connections to my time spent in New York, so there’s a familiarity there,” Kreider said, before listing more reasons for his signing. “Everything that they’re doing here and have been doing for a few years now, the culture that they’ve built, the group that they have.”

Kreider’s ties to the Canadiens, who emerged from a full-scale rebuild to reach the Eastern Conference final last season, include president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton and head athletic therapist Jim Ramsay, both formerly of the Rangers.

But none, it appears, influenced his decision more than head coach Martin St. Louis.

At the tail end of his playing career, St. Louis frequently played on the same line as a fresh-faced Kreider with the Rangers in 2014-15. Even then, Kreider sensed his Hall of Fame teammate would one day thrive behind the bench.

“He was almost like a player-coach,” Kreider said. “I don’t think I can say that I’ve learned more from any one individual than the time that I spent playing with him on his line. Super wise, incredibly smart.”

Kreider even sought St. Louis’s guidance a year before St. Louis went from coaching his sons in youth hockey to taking over the Canadiens in 2021.

“He sat down and was going over tape with me,” Kreider said. “Good mentor, a good person and just picked his brain on the way he saw the game. Got on the ice with him individually as well at the time.

“I’ve always put him in that coaching category. It was just always in his makeup, even when we were teammates. He’s a coach.”

St. Louis, meanwhile, will coach a former teammate for the first time. He said he’s glad it’s Kreider, highlighting his speed, compete level and personality.

“To me it’s simple. You look at our club, what do we need? Well, we need probably a little more experience; he checks that box. We need a little more sandpaper, checks that box. Net-front guy, checks that box,” said St. Louis, who signed a contract extension through the 2029-30 season Monday.

“And all these blocks wouldn’t matter unless he was a quality human being, right? And to me it starts with that with Chris.”

On paper, Kreider also temporarily addresses the Canadiens’ long-standing need for a top-six forward to complement Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky and Ivan Demidov — buying the team time to find a more permanent solution.

“Size, speed, experience. I knew that he would be a really good fit in the room,” Gorton said. “It just seemed there weren’t really any negatives when we were thinking about it.”

Kreider said he’s prepared to play any role in the Canadiens’ talent-packed lineup, including killing penalties, to help the young team build on a stellar season of 106 points and a trip to the third round of the playoffs.

His teammates, meanwhile, are excited to learn from a proven goal-scorer with 135 games of post-season experience under his belt.

“I feel like he knows all the tricks, how to prepare yourself, what to do in different situations,” Slafkovsky said. “He brings experience, he brings speed. I think he’s one of the fastest guys for sure, and he scored 50 goals. I don’t think we need to go further there.

“But I think the big thing is the experience that he has from all these playoff runs.” 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 14, 2026.

Daniel Rainbird, The Canadian Press

by The Canadian Press