The Montreal Maroons (officially the Montreal Professional Hockey Club) was a professional men's ice hockey team in the National Hockey League (NHL). They played in the NHL from 1924 to 1938, winning the Stanley Cup in 1926 and 1935. They were the last non-Original Six team to win the Stanley Cup until the expansion Philadelphia Flyers won in 1974, and the last NHL franchise to fold after having previously won a Stanley Cup championship. A highly competitive team, some of the greatest players of the era played for the Maroons, including Hall of Fame players Nels Stewart, Lionel Conacher, Clint Benedict, Babe Siebert, George Boucher, Hooley Smith, Punch Broadbent, Reg Noble and Toe Blake.

The Montreal Maroons hockey team was created to appeal to the anglophone neighbourhoods of Montreal. In 1918, the arena shared by the Montreal Canadiens and the Montreal Wanderers burnt down. The Canadiens, who drew primarily Montreal’s francophones, moved to the Mount Royal arena, which had natural ice and seating for only 3,250. The Wanderers, who were the team of Montreal’s anglophone community, folded. By 1922, work was begun to build a team to appeal to the anglophones and return to the NHL. In January 1924, construction began on a new arena, on the site of a roller-skating rink called The Forum, and by the fall, at a cost of $1.5 million, the Montreal Forum was complete. The Montreal Forum was the first large arena in the NHL. The Maroons joined the league in 1924 along with the Boston Bruins. The Canadiens objected to a second team in Montreal, but relented when they were compensated by expansion fees. The expansion fees for both teams were $15,000, with $11,000 of the Maroons' fee going to their cross-town rivals, the Canadiens. It would not be until the 1970s that the NHL would admit another Canadian team into the league.

Montreal (ⁱ/ˌmʌntriːˈɒl/;French: Montréal; pronounced [mɔ̃ʁeal] ( listen)) is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the fifteenth largest in North America. Originally called Ville-Marie, or "City of Mary", the city takes its present name from Mount Royal, the triple-peaked hill located in the heart of the city, or Mont Réal as it was spelled in Middle French (Mont Royal in present French). The city is located on the Island of Montreal, which took its name from the same source as the city, and a few much smaller peripheral islands, the largest of which is Île Bizard.

As of May 10, 2011, Statistics Canada identifies Montreal's Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) (land area 4,259 square kilometres (1,644 sq mi)) as Canada's second most populous with an estimated metropolitan area population of 3,824,221 and a population of 1,886,481 in the urban agglomeration of Montreal, which includes all of the municipalities on the Island of Montreal. The city of Montreal proper had a population of 1,649,519.