NOW MORE THAN EVER, CANADIENS RELYING ON PRICE TO SAVE THE DAY
Veteran goaltender has been spectacular as he edges closer to team record for wins
The Canadiens will go as far as Carey Price can carry them this season.
That’s a sentence that could have been used in just about every story written about the Canadiens for the last eight years since former GM Pierre Gauthier traded Jaroslav Halak to the St. Louis Blues in exchange for Lars Eller and Ian Schultz on June 17, 2010. The trade officially handed the No. 1 goalie job to Price less than a month after Halak had carried the Canadiens to the Eastern Conference final before losing in five games to the Philadelphia Flyers.
“We had two good, young goaltenders, and we still have one, and we’ve added two prospects, one who’s ahead of the other,” Gauthier said after making the trade.
Eller is with the Washington Capitals, Schultz never played a game in the NHL and Halak is with the Boston Bruins. But Price remains in Montreal and in the first season of his eight-year, US$84-million contract, the Canadiens will continue to go as far their goalie can carry them for the foreseeable future.
“Carey still has a lot of good hockey in front of him,” Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin said after signing the 31-year-old Price to his new contract.
Price has been playing some very good — with gusts up to outstanding — hockey recently, posting a 7-3 record in his last 10 starts heading into tonight’s game against the Vegas Golden Knights at the T-Mobile Arena (4 p.m., TSN2, RDS, TSN 690 Radio).
Price has allowed 24 goals in the last 10 games, improving his season record to 14-10-4 with a 2.84 goals-against average and a .905 save percentage.
Price was outstanding in Thursday night’s 2-1 win over the Coyotes in Arizona, stopping 36 of 37 shots for his 300th career regular-season victory. Only 34 other NHL goalies have reached that plateau and only one other Canadien: Hall of Famer Jacques Plante, who holds the team record with 314 wins. It’s a safe bet that Price — who has a 300211-66 record — will beat that record this season.
“He’s been a good goaltender for a long time,” Canadiens head coach Claude Julien said about Price after Thursday’s victory. “Tonight, I thought he stood on his head. Some of those saves he made tonight were vintage Carey Price that everybody got used to. So it’s nice to see those kind of games. He was the same way yesterday (in a 2-1 loss to the Avalanche in Colorado), I thought he played really, really well. When your goaltender’s hot, you have a tendency to want to ride him.”
Julien has been riding Price hard, with the goalie starting 16 of the last 18 games and coming on in relief of Antti Niemi for the final 13:50 of a 7-1 loss in Minnesota on Dec. 11, stopping all nine shots he faced. Price has had only one game off since Nov. 15 and played back-to-back games on consecutive nights for the second time this month in Arizona.
“If he’s a little bit tired, then you want to go with the other guy,” Julien said about playing Price in back-to-back situations.
“But sometimes we make the decision ahead of time, we say: ‘Listen, he’s played X number of games. He’ll play this one and Niemi will play the other one,’ and it’s cut and dried. But there’s times where we keep an open mind and say: ‘Let’s see how the first game goes and whether he has lots of work or not too much and whether he’s still feeling good.’ And right now, what I would tell you is that Carey’s been playing pretty good.”
That’s an understatement. Price is the biggest reason why the Canadiens are still holding the second wild-card playoff spot in the Eastern Conference with an 18-13-5 record.
One of the reasons Julien has been leaning so heavily on Price is the fact Niemi hasn’t been very good, posting a 4-3-1 record with a 4.14 goals-against average and an .876 save percentage.
Another is that the Canadiens’ shaky defence gives up a lot of Grade-A scoring chances.
You have to figure Bergevin is shopping around for a legitimate, left-handed No. 2 defenceman to play beside captain Shea Weber. While Jordie Benn will give everything he has, he’s not close to being a No. 2 defenceman — a role he has held the last two games beside Weber.
There’s only so much Price can do and he can’t come to the rescue every time there’s a great scoring chance. Also, after a brutal season last year and a bad stretch this season when he was admittedly struggling with the mental part of his game, Price has to show he can keep up his current level of play for an extended period of time.
“I feel pretty good,” Price said after Thursday’s win. “Just trying to keep that compete level where it needs to be and let the cards fall as they may, I guess.”
Then he added with a sly smile: “We’re going to Vegas.”
The Canadiens are still betting heavily on Price.