The Bell Canadiens Escape wins at Hashtag Sports Awards

MONTREAL - The pressure rises as the clock ticks down, and all 21,105 fans in attendance (minus four) study the central scoreboard.

No, it's not the final seconds of regulation in a tight game - it's the now award-winning Bell Canadiens Escape, a first-of-its-kind escape room experience at Habs home games since October 2022.

The immersive enigma took top honors at the 2023 Hashtag Sports Awards, an annual event recognizing teams that raise the bar for fan engagement. The Habs placed first in the Best New Fan Experience category, beating out offerings from the Sacramento Kings and Washington Capitals and Wizards, among others.

But what's an escape room doing inside a hockey arena anyway?

The activation was created in partnership with Bell and designed by Échappe-Toi to offer fans a unique experience only available in person at the Bell Centre.

The premise is simple, if not a little quirky:

The famed Canadiens torch has gone missing and it's up to the night's four fans to retrieve it under the watchful eyes of the crowd. Locked in the camera-equipped space just before puck drop, the quartet have 30 minutes to find the missing artifact and return to their seats - lest miss the start of the game and be shown on the scoreboard in "I FAILED!" T-shirts.

Watch Brendan Gallagher and Paul Byron put their off-ice "break out" skills to the test earlier this season, below.

A three-year partnership with Bell, the activation will be back in an all-new format for Season 2 in 2023-24 following a sold-out Season 1, offering 41 new groups of four a chance to crack the codes.

In the meantime, the club will reinforce its trophy case to keep its latest hardware from going missing again like the torch.