Montreal mayor discusses what Canadiens mean to city in Q&A with NHL.com

In NHL.com's Q&A feature called “Sitting Down with …” we talk to key figures in the game, gaining insight into their lives on and off the ice. This week, we feature Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada for her first talk of substance about the Montreal Canadiens since she was elected last November. The new Mayor, the 46th since the city was incorporated in 1832, is a true red-white-and-blue fan of the Canadiens. She would like nothing better than to welcome the team to City Hall to celebrate their 25th Stanley Cup championship, No. 24 having come in 1993.

MONTREAL -- When the Canadiens are playing well, there is a lightness in the step of Montrealers -- through autumn leaves, winter snow and springtime rain.

Born in 1909, eight years before the NHL was founded, the oldest and most successful team in professional hockey has forever been this city’s emotional pulse and a healthy part of its economic engine.

The Canadiens have won the Stanley Cup a record 24 times; their first in the pre-NHL National Hockey Association in 1916, then 23 more from 1924-93.

Soraya Martinez Ferrada was elected Montreal’s 46th mayor last Nov. 2 and sworn in 11 days later, the city’s 18th different mayor since the birth of the Canadiens. Only six have held office for the team’s 24 championships: Jean Drapeau, 13; Camillien Houde, four; Sarto Fournier, three; Mederic Martin, two; and Ademar Raynault and Jean Dore, one each.

Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez in her City Hall office on Feb. 6, 2026 with a signed photo of 2025 Calder Trophy-winning Canadiens defenseman Lane Hutson, a Hutson puck (r.) and a Montreal Canadiens Children’s Foundation commemorative aluminum puck.

Mayor Martinez Ferrada arrived in this city at age 7 in 1979 with her mother from their native Chile, refugees fleeing the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Since 2005, having earned a master’s degree in management, she has forged a successful life in municipal and federal politics.

In February 2025, the 53-year-old native of Santiago resigned from the cabinet of Canada’s federal Liberal Party, was elected leader of Ensemble Montreal and led her party to victory in the November municipal election, becoming the city’s first Latin American Canadian mayor.

The Canadiens were two defeats into a season-high five-game losing streak upon her swearing in. But since that slump ended, the team has gone 22-13-6, today a Stanley Cup Playoff contender that has fully engaged its fan base in Montreal and far beyond.

No Montreal mayor is truly worth the chains of elected office until she or he discusses the Canadiens’ power play, the third-line center’s ice time and the goaltending rotation. Or at least, what the team means on personal and civic levels.

So it was last Friday that Soraya Martinez Ferrada welcomed NHL.com to her office in City Hall, on whose Old Montreal steps many championship Canadiens teams have been celebrated, to talk about the sports heartbeat of her city.

Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada with game host Michel Kunta during the Dec. 20, 2025 Bell Centre game between the Montreal Canadiens and visiting Pittsburgh Penguins.

How special would it be for you to welcome the Canadiens to City Hall for the 25th Stanley Cup win in franchise history?

"It would be amazing. I have a mandate of four years, hopefully I’ll get a second one, so I’m crossing my fingers that we’ll have a good team and I might host the Stanley Cup champions during those years. Maybe I’ll be the lucky Mayor to do that."

You arrived in Montreal from Chile in August 1979, three months after the team’s 22nd championship and their fourth in a row. You’ve been here for two Stanley Cup celebrations, in 1986 and 1993.

"I was in high school in 1986 and I remember having so much fun at the parade. It spoke to all Montrealers in terms of the festivities. I‘d come to like hockey -- watching TV was a sacred thing for our family -- and I was a Quebec Nordiques fan first. There was such a rivalry with the Canadiens. I’m from a family that fled a dictatorship so we’re a bit of a family of activists and the Nordiques gave us a sense of emotion, of fighting something within the nation of Quebec, right? The Stanley Cup in 1993 is unfortunately remembered more for a riot by fans than for a celebration of the victory and the parade. I was in university and my mother was freaking out that I was downtown. It was a traumatic thing for merchants, who still can be nervous whenever there’s a good vibe of the Canadiens making the playoffs. We have to remind everyone to safely stay in the joy of winning."

Did you skip high-school class in 1986 to attend the parade?

(laughs) “Probably."

Soraya Martinez Ferrada during her Nov. 13, 2025 swearing-in ceremony as Mayor of Montreal.

Your two teams were in action at Bell Centre on Jan. 29, the visiting Colorado Avalanche wearing Nordiques jerseys against the Canadiens to celebrate their franchise birth and rekindle the old rivalry. Montreal won 7-3. Did you attend?

"I couldn’t, it was the same time we held a commemoration to honor the victims and survivors of the 2017 mosque attack in Quebec City (a mass shooting that claimed six lives). I caught the last period on TV when I got home."

So you’ve attended only one Canadiens game since being sworn in, Montreal defeating the Pittsburgh Penguins 4-0 on Dec. 20. The Canadiens are undefeated and not scored upon with you in the arena as Mayor -- a better statistic than the fact the night you were being sworn in, they lost 7-0 at home to the Dallas Stars.

"I was very happy to go that night. I was a month into my mandate and we were addressing the issue of homelessness in Montreal, sending a message to everyone that if you can help, raise your hand and we’ll find a way. The Canadiens called me and said they heard us, that they could do something to help the homeless with their 50/50 raffle. The Old Brewery Mission was chosen to benefit that night (more than $65,000 was raised) and it was important for me to be there."

From left at Bell Centre on Dec. 20, 2025: Geoff Molson, Canadiens’ owner and CEO; Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Mayor of Montreal; James Hughes, President and CEO of Montreal’s Old Brewery Mission; France Margaret Belanger, Canadiens President, Sports and Entertainment; Patrice Brisebois, Canadiens Alumni President. At right: the Mayor with her Canadiens jersey.

The Canadiens gave you a No. 25 SORAYA nameplated jersey that night. Not including training camps, alumni and exhibition games, you’re the 24th to officially wear that number, famously worn by 1970s Canadiens star Jacques Lemaire into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Was that jersey a surprise?

"It was, yes. It was really special, the No. 25 for the year I was elected Mayor. It’s at home now, I’m having it put in a frame that I can open and take out when I need to. Genevieve Guilbault (a member of Quebec’s National Assembly) gave me a Nordiques jersey. (laughs) I told her there was no way I’d put it in my office until my Canadiens jersey is ready."

You renewed your friendship that night with Canadiens mascot Youppi! You’d met, so to speak, in 2009 when the Canadiens opened their first of to-date 15 outdoor refrigerated community rinks in underserved neighborhoods throughout Quebec. The first was in Montreal-district St-Michel where you were serving as an elected member of council.

"That project was a really good one -- hockey in the winter, a basketball court in the summer. I grew up in the St-Michel neighborhood, which had a bad reputation in the media for its gang activity, Blues vs. Reds. Now you have the blue and red being a positive: a hockey rink. That the Canadiens picked St-Michel was really good for us, for the spirit of the neighborhood. Hockey is something for all Montrealers, and it’s really something for neighborhoods that have a very diverse population. In some communities we’re more fans of soccer, not necessarily hockey because we don’t see the sport as being 'for us.' Having that rink come to St-Michel was the Canadiens’ way of saying, 'Yes, it is also for you.’"

Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada speaks at a news conference on Jan. 23, 2026, and in front of Montreal’s Jacques Cartier Bridge.

How much did you know about hockey when you arrived in Montreal in 1979?

"Nothing. Chile is a soccer nation, in our culture and background. When you come to a new home, you wish to integrate into the society that welcomes you. You embrace what the national sport is here, which is hockey. Montreal is a sports city. We have an MLS soccer team. We had baseball’s Expos. I used to go so many times to Olympic Stadium with my grandfather. We have a city that loves hockey, tennis, soccer, football’s Alouettes, Formula One racing … every citizen in the city can find a sport that they love and obviously so many of them love the Canadiens."

When did you attend your first Canadiens game?

"Very late, at the Bell Centre. I’d have been in my 40s. As a young girl, I’d go with my mother to food banks, so we were never able to afford a hockey ticket. It’s a challenge to democratize the sport so a family can go to a game. The Canadiens have done a great job addressing that with special sections in the Bell Centre, making them more accessible. I never saw a game at the Forum and I’m sad about that. I’ve heard about it and I’m glad that a lot of people bought souvenir seats from the building. I don’t know if City Hall has one. We should have bought one, I hope they did. I’m going to check on that."

Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada speaks with TVA Sports’ Felix Seguin in the broadcast booth before the Dec. 20, 2025 Bell Centre game between the Montreal Canadiens and visiting Pittsburgh Penguins.

Who was your first favorite player?

"(Defenseman) P.K. Subban. He was a good player, of course, but he was a good human. You see that today. He engaged to raise money for the Montreal Children’s Hospital and he hasn’t stopped, even though it’s been years since he’s been with the Canadiens. To me, that speaks to the person."

Finally: how often do you skate, and if the Canadiens drafted you today, what position would you play?

"I’ve got to say, it’s been a very long time since I’ve skated, I don’t know if I could now. The worst part of my job is not having the time to do all the things I’d like to do. And I like to score so I’d be a forward, an attacker. That’s the way I am in life as a person, it’s in my DNA."

Top photo: Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada with Canadiens mascot Youppi! during the Dec. 20, 2025 Bell Centre game between Montreal and the visiting Pittsburgh Penguins.