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Originally Posted by jonny24
Now, I say this as someone who doesn't follow hockey, but I've never seen anything around town that would indicate this anything but Leafs Nation. There's always rando fans, and of course some will be Habs fans, but calling Hamilton split Leafs/Habs seems out to lunch.
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MLSE and Toronto-based media dominate locally, so the outward signs aren't there. E.g., good luck finding a depth-piece about the Canadiens in the Spec with Torstar running the show, and more Toronto games are on TV -- I recall often seeing Montreal on HNIC when I was a kid; this was much less the case in the 2000s.
There may proportionally be more Leafs fans these days, and I'm getting older so things have likely changed. But back in the 1980s and '90s it seemed like a fairly even split. Toronto had become a respectable team again by 1993 and Montreal was still winning, so the band-wagons were full.
But I bet there are a lot of closet Canadiens fans owing to their record over the past few seasons, aside from that year they beat the Leafs in the first round of the playoffs. And having their farm team here for a number of years helped too.