1909 Taverne Moderne sits at the foot of the Bell Centre at 1280 Avenue des Canadiens-de-Montreal, and it does not pretend to be subtle. The Canadiens opened it in 2017 as their own room, and at more than 20,000 square feet it was built to swallow a hockey crowd whole. The numbers do the talking: 65 high-resolution televisions and a single screen that runs 46 feet across, billed as the largest in the country.
The pull is obvious before you order a thing. When NHL.com covered the opening, it led with that 46-foot wall and the sheer count of screens, and that is still the reason fans pour in here on a game night. No seat in the room loses the play.
The space is split across multiple levels, with a long bar, a wall of booths, and tables packed close when the puck is about to drop. The crowd is pure Bell Centre overflow: ticket holders killing the hours before warmups, fans without seats who want the building's energy anyway, and a steady tourist trade staying in the hotels across the tracks. It runs hot before a Habs home game and stays loud through the third.
What to order leans tavern, now under a St-Hubert kitchen partnership: a cold draft to start, a plate of wings or smoked-meat poutine to share, and a burger or rotisserie plate that holds up across a full sixty minutes. Pricing sits at $$, which is fair for the location and the spectacle.
Who it is for: the Canadiens fan with or without a ticket, the visitor who wants the loudest room in the core, and the group that needs a big table near the arena. For the wider field, our ranked guide to the best sports bars in Montreal puts 1909 at the top of the flagship tier, and the full Montreal guide maps it against the Bell Centre.
Best time to go is a Canadiens home night, ideally 90 minutes before puck drop, when the room fills but the bar can still move. Off the hockey calendar, weekend afternoons stack soccer and UFC across the wall of screens for a quieter watch. The Lucien-L'Allier and Bonaventure Metro stops are both a short walk, and the room connects straight to the arena foot traffic.
For a downtown alternative a few blocks east, La Cage Brasserie Sportive at Complexe Desjardins covers the same bases at a smaller scale, and La Station des Sports holds the Village end of Sainte-Catherine. What keeps 1909 first on the list is simple: it is the official Canadiens room with the biggest screen in Canada, sitting exactly where the fans already are. For a fan who wants the building's roar without a ticket, this is the call, and our national sports bars index rounds out the map.
The 1909 in the name nods to the year the Canadiens were founded, and the room wears that history without turning into a museum. Old team photos and a wall of memorabilia frame the space, but the focus stays on the live game in front of you. It is a working sports bar first and a shrine second.
One practical note: on a sold-out night the wait for a table can stretch past an hour, so a reservation is the difference between catching the first period and catching the line. The bar itself takes walk-ins, and the standing room near the big screen is often the best view in the house anyway. Arrive hungry, because the St-Hubert kitchen portions are built for a hockey crowd.
Sources: NHL.com (Canadiens) · Tripadvisor · Yelp (updated December 2025)
