PRICE SAVES HARSHEST CRITICISM FOR HIMSELF
Goalie shoulders blame as Habs allow 3-1 lead to slip away against Rangers
Canadiens coach Claude Julien wasn’t about to throw goaltender Carey Price under the bus after the Canadiens dropped a 5-3 decision to the New York Rangers. “I’m not talking about any individual because, as a group, we weren’t very good, so it was more than just one player,” Julien said when asked to assess the goaltender’s performance. But the goaltender, who gave up five goals on 32 shots, literally shouldered some of the blame for the loss in a game that the Canadiens led 3-1 in the second period. “I thought we played a pretty solid game up to a point and then I don’t know whether it was mental fatigue or what it was, but we didn’t play smart hockey and I didn’t make the saves at the end of the game to hold us in there,” Price said. “I thought I could have made a better play on the go-ahead goal,” said Price, who was beaten by Neal Pionk with the teams playing 4-on-4 with less than three minutes to play. The Rangers pulled even at 8:25 of the third period when Pavel Buchnevich scored on a rebound after Marc Staal’s shot hit Price in the shoulder. “I don’t know if it hit a stick or I just mistracked it,” Price said. “I thought I had it here in my neck, but it fell right for him.” This game started out as one of Price’s best games of the season, but the Rangers pushed hard after Max Domi scored a power-play goal to put Montreal up 3-1 in the second period. Any flow disappeared as both teams took penalties. “Those things happen with every team and a lot of times it’s a player not being sharp and not taking the right person or we’re not watching that the person he’s supposed to take is coming off or skating by the bench,” Julien said. “Everyone has to be clear on who he’s supposed to take before they even get to the bench and those penalties are unnecessary and we have to be better in that area.” Technically, the Canadiens won the special-teams battle with one power-play goal on six opportunities, while the Rangers went 0-for-6. But New York scored one second after a penalty expired and the Canadiens squandered a 5-on-3 advantage in the second period. Julien called a timeout to get the power play organized, but it ended 22 seconds later when Tomas Tatar took an interference penalty. “If we scored one extra goal, it might be a different game, but we gave them life,” said Tatar, who scored two goals. “We took a few bad penalties, including me, and we can’t let that happen.” The Canadiens could have used fatigue as an excuse. They were playing their second game in two nights — they beat the Islanders 4-3 in a shootout Monday — and this was their fourth game in six nights. But nobody wanted to use that as an excuse. “When you’re up 3-1 back-toback, you should hold the lead and we’re going to learn from that,” Tatar said. “We lost points that should have been ours.” “There’s always a little bit of fatigue, but we play two in two a lot in the season and you can’t use that as an excuse,” Julien said. “We had a 3-1 lead, so we weren’t that tired. At the end of the day, we made a lot of individual mistakes, mental mistakes. (The loss) was self-inflicted.” Joel Armia left the game in the second period with a lower-body injury after a knee-on-knee hit and his condition will be evaluated in Montreal.
If we scored one extra goal, it might be a different game, but we gave them life. We took a few bad penalties, including me, and we can’t let that happen. TOMAS TATAR