WORTHY OF DRYDEN
Price is back, Todd says
Carey Price won’t win the Hart or the Vézina Trophy this season. He may not even be the MVP of his own rather bipolar team.
But if we didn’t already know that the Canadiens goaltender is one for the ages, he stamped that passport Saturday night at the Air Canada Centre with an overtime save on a partial breakaway by the young Maple Leafs star Auston Matthews.
A few seconds later, Andrew Shaw had scored for the Canadiens, completing a powerful game for him and moving Price past Ken Dryden into third place on the list of the winningest goalies in the long and glorious history of les glorieux.
Price, born 40 years after Dryden, has now eclipsed his boyhood hero with 259 wins to Dryden’s 258. Thirty more wins and he will catch Patrick Roy, who had 289 with the Canadiens before that fateful game against Detroit in 1995 led to his exit.
Assuming he remains healthy, Price should surpass Roy’s total next season. After that, there remains only Jacques Plante, with 314 wins in 556 starts for the Canadiens — but Dryden is the goaltender Price most resembles on the ice.
Away from the ice, about the only similarity is that they are both tall men with that air of command. Dryden is the urbane, eastern intellectual who tends to speak in lengthy paragraphs, Price the laconic western cowpoke with the mixed heritage.
On the ice, their comportment is very similar: calm, cool and collected. Early on in his career, perhaps, Price tended to emphasize that quality a bit too much, to the point where he appeared lackadaisical at times. No more. No one doubts his competitive fire, the inner drive that has led him to win virtually every honour you can bestow on a goaltender short of that elusive Stanley Cup ring.
In addition to passing Dryden, Price equalled another, more obscure record with 11 consecutive wins over the Maple Leafs. The Canadiens as a team ran their streak against Toronto to 14 straight, a streak that is unlikely to endure much longer in the face of that squad of young guns now maturing for the Leafs — but a record is a record. Price’s feat matches the streak put up in the 1920s by Clint Benedict for the Montreal Maroons.
Benedict, in addition to making the Hall of Fame, is also noteworthy as the first goaltender to wear a mask. He went to a leather contraption that made him look like Hannibal Lecter for a time after taking a shot to the face from Howie Morenz — a reminder, if any were needed, that it has always taken a healthy portion of courage to play goal in the NHL.
Over the decades, the Canadiens have had extraordinary luck at the goaltender position: Georges Vézina, George Hainsworth (who also spent four seasons with the Leafs), Bill Durnan, Jacques Plante, Dryden, Patrick Roy, Price. Even the lesser-knowns who played in the interstices between the stars were sometimes extraordinary: Gump Worsley, Rogie Vachon, Bunny Larocque, José Theodore, Jaroslav Halak.
To move past Dryden while playing for some mediocre teams is a notable feat for Price. It’s a measure of the difference between their eras that it has taken Price almost 100 more games to reach Dryden’s win total. Dryden played 397 games for Montreal, while Price sits at 494 going into Monday night’s game against New Jersey.
The first NHL game I saw live began with a bang-bang play on a Sunday afternoon at the old Forum. We were late for the game because we had forgotten the spring-ahead time change and were just settling into our seats behind the Canadiens’ net when the Blackhawks’ Dennis Hull swept over the blue-line and ripped a big slapshot from the left wing. The sharp crack of Hull’s stick hitting the puck and the whap as the shot ripped into Dryden’s glove were almost simultaneous.
My jaw dropped. How was it possible to shoot a puck that hard? And, more mysteriously still, how was it possible to snatch it out of the air a microsecond later? I tried to explain it to skeptical American friends later, how hockey is a sport of speed and sound and if you haven’t been there at least once to see it live, it’s impossible to understand the speed and power of the sport — a speed Price has to face every night he puts on the pads.
What matters most, of course, is not passing Dryden, but the fact that the “real” Price appears to be back after missing the better part of last season and following the departure of former head coach Michel Therrien. After a lengthy stretch when he was all too mortal, Price has made some godlike saves in the past four games, even in the two he lost.
This doesn’t appear to be the season when Price will get that Stanley Cup ring, but as Dryden and Roy proved a long time ago — when your goaltender is one for the ages, anything is possible.
(Carey) Price, born 40 years after (Ken) Dryden, has now eclipsed his boyhood hero with 259 wins to Dryden’s 258.