This hasn’t been Price’s best year
Goaltender’s sudden slide not just a product of the Habs’ struggles on defence, offence
“Your best players have to play like your best players,” said every coach in every sport since forever.
Carey Price has shouldered so much of the load for the Canadiens for so long that it seems like heresy to suggest he has been something less than all-world this season. Or even an all-star.
But based on the reality of a campaign that was over before Santa harnessed his reindeer, Price had no business playing in the all-star game.
Based on Price’s career, he should have been part of the festivities. But taking this season alone, the only Canadien who deserved an all-star berth was Brendan Gallagher. The undersized power forward with a heart the size of the Bay of Fundy has been there, night in and night out, taking the worst the league’s redwoods can throw his way around the crease without complaint and still producing steadily.
He should have been in Tampa taking a bow, because given a team of Gallaghers, that elusive 25th Stanley Cup parade would be a reality at some point in the near future.
Price, meanwhile, has been an enigma.
Superb at times, but not often enough. Sluggish at other times. What the real cause might be is pure speculation: technical faults, a lingering injury, the chronic fatigue syndrome Price mention in an interview with TVA and then refused to discuss. Off-ice problems that have left him stressed and/or depressed.
Whatever, he has simply not been the Price we know. Yes, the defence has been less than expected, but Price has made a career out of bailing out his teammates. This season, he is clearly struggling. Numbers can lie over a short period of time, but the base statistics are never far from the mark over the long term.
Price has never completed a season in the NHL with a goalsagainst average over 3.00, yet his GAA stood at 3.02 at the break. His save percentage, at .905, matched career lows put up in his second season (2008-09) and the 2012-13 campaign. (During the 2014-15 season, when Price walked away with all the hardware in Las Vegas, he had a 1.96 goals-against average and a .933 save percentage.)
Worse, the trend of late is in the wrong direction. Price is 1-22 in his last five home games with a 3.76 goals-against average and an .861 save percentage — numbers that won’t even keep you in the league.
The bottom line is as unlovely as the rest of it: Price’s won-lost mark on the season is 14-17-4. Toss out the league’s absurd loser point and you get a more accurate take, as you do for the team as a whole: 14 wins, 21 losses.
For his fans (and they are legion), Price can do no wrong. He walks on water; so what if it’s frozen? To them, it’s all the fault of the defence. Curse Jordie Benn, curse Karl Alzner, damn Jeff Petry to the skies. But even if the defence is responsible for half the bloat in Price’s numbers, that leaves a sizable portion to the goalie himself.
The last game before the break was a prime example. In a game so loose and sloppy it could have been an all-star game, Price was terrific in the first period. But over the last two periods, with his teammates actually scoring goals for him, Price was barely so-so.
There is in all this both a generous quantum of woe and some cause for optimism. If this is a one-off for Price (and there’s every reason to believe it is) then he will bounce back, come firing out of the blocks next season and take a run at another Vézina Trophy. If it isn’t, then the Canadiens are facing a very long eight years from now to the end of the mega-deal Price signed during the off-season.
Part of the difficulty for Price, no doubt, is the absence of Shea Weber on the blue-line. Weber, the team’s second-most important player and far and away its best defenceman, has been battling a foot injury since the season’s first game, missed seven games in November, returned Dec. 2 and had to be shut down on Dec. 18. There has been no word on a possible return since early January.
Injuries to key players create a chain reaction. With Weber either playing hurt or missing, other defencemen had to take on new roles and play vastly increased minutes. Not surprisingly, they have struggled as a group.
Finally, on an offensively challenged club, you have Max Pacioretty. The captain’s numbers may look all right at season’s end, but the fact is that he didn’t get on a hot streak until the season was lost.
You can blame the struggles of Price and Pacioretty or Weber’s injury on Marc Bergevin. The GM had a rough off-season, but if his top three players were available and performing at or near their career levels, this would be a playoff team.
Instead, there is little remaining for the Canadiens to do except to fill in the numbers from now until they hit the golf course in early April. Because when your best players aren’t your best players …
You know the rest.