All eyes on Sask.-born goalie
MONTREAL — Carey Price stood drained in front of his TD Garden stall last Wednesday in Boston and considered, with his usual is-it-bedtime-yet? expression, that his team was heading into the third round of the NHL playoffs for the second time in his seven-season career.
“I am ecstatic (even if) I don’t show it a lot,” the Canadiens goaltender said, his joy more thrilling in type than how it sounded in the sleepy tone of his voice.
“But at the same time, you have to realize that it’s not over. We’re only halfway there.”
Less than half a game later, Saturday afternoon at the Bell Centre, it’s possible that Price’s season came to a devastating end when he was crushed by New York Rangers forward Chris Kreider in a violent high-speed goalmouth collision.
Now the Canadiens are facing their toughest challenge this post-season, down 2-0 to the Rangers in this best-of-seven Eastern Conference final after their 3-1 loss Monday. Games 3 and 4 are in New York Thursday and Sunday respectively.
It was the gambler — Canadiens’ head coach Michel Therrien — who rolled Monday’s dice with rookie Dustin Tokarski, a native of Humboldt whose two-and-games for the Canadiens this season had come on the road. While he couldn’t match Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist’s performance, Tokarski did make 27 saves while giving up first-period goals by Rick Nash and Martin St. Louis and a second period marker by Ryan McDonagh. Two of the goals came on the power play.
As it turned out, it was the Canadiens’ inability to solve Lundqvist as much as anything on this night. Max Pacioretty scored at 6:14 of the first period to give Montreal the early lead, but that would be the extent of the offence. Lundqvist had 40 saves in all, earning first star status.
If the Canadiens somehow crawl out of this deep hole, they’ll do so without Price, the man who in colossal part got them this far.
Price finished Saturday’s second period, having gingerly hopped back up after being pasted. He passed the on-ice right-knee inspection of head athletic therapist Graham Rynbend.
But he sat out the third, yielding the net to backup Peter Budaj, skated just a few minutes in advance of Sunday’s practice before leaving the ice in Brossard, Que., then didn’t participate in Monday morning’s skate before Game 2 of the Eastern Conference final.
Not long afterward, head coach Therrien detonated the thermonuclear device in his media briefing, saying that Price would not be available for Game 2, or for this entire second round.
The sound of oxygen dropping like a cinder block out of the lungs of an entire city, and a huge fan base far beyond, is a remarkable thing to hear.
One of those sledgehammered Saturday was Canadiens owner, president and CEO Geoff Molson, watching from his Bell Centre loge.
“Your heart stops beating for a second,” Molson said Monday, chatting in his office for a half-hour before Game 2. “You see Carey get up and you’re relieved. But still, as an owner, I immediately asked (general manager) Marc (Bergevin) to fill me in with details as he had them.
“Obviously, we didn’t have them (Saturday) night. Carey had to spend the night resting to see where he stood the next day. He’s our best player and he’s the reason we’re in the third round right now. It’s really a big disappointment to lose him.
“But we have a team full of character,” Molson added. “I believe in everyone in the organization. I think they’re capable of overcoming this.”
Molson had sent Price a text message earlier in the day and got a reply “that he’s going to do everything possible to get back as soon as possible. He’s a winner.”
Price was excellent in Montreal’s quarter- final sweep of Tampa Bay, then upped his game yet another level in the seven-game come-from-behind semifinal upset of the Boston Bruins.
It would be on the back of Price, versus the superb Lundqvist in the Rangers net, that the Canadiens would make a push for the team’s first Stanley Cup final berth since 1993, when they won their 24th championship.
The Habs are far from out, but their path to the final has just become strewn with boulders worthy of the surface of the moon. With Price sidelined, the netminding now is in the hands of Budaj and Tokarski, who between them going into Game 2 had appeared in seven career playoff games, all of them by Budaj.
After the emotional to-thelimit series against Boston, Canadiens fans and perhaps the team itself wondered about the degree of intensity a series against the Rangers could generate.
That also was the thought last season, when the Habs met the dry-white-toast Ottawa Senators in the first round. But a thunderous open-ice check of Lars Eller by Ottawa’s Eric Gryba in Game 1 changed that in a hurry, Eller stretchered off and very bad being the colour of every drop of blood spilled from that moment onward.
Then on Saturday, in one goalie-splattering collision, the Rangers’ Kreider replaced Bruins captain Zdeno Chara at least temporarily as the most detested opponent on Montreal ice.
It was a year ago that Price stood before his Brossard dressing-room stall and spoke of his Canadiens’ past, present and future, having been unable to play his team’s fifth and final Eastern quarter-final game against Ottawa.
Price had suffered a second-degree sprain of his left medial collateral ligament in Game 4, six-plus weeks of rehab and healing sending him into summer.
He returned in September to a new goaltending coach, Stephane Waite, and a new approach to playing his position, each game packaged into a sharply focused routine — no looking games ahead, and no looking back beyond a little video review to tweak his mechanics.
And then Price was bulldozed by Kreider, who is infamous for his hard, net-driving style that through his own fault, or not, has claimed a handful of goalies.
he debate about the incident will only heat up, especially with the Canadiens now needing to win at least two of three scheduled games at Madison Square Garden.
Geoff Molson wasn’t sitting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper Monday night, or with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, these two very different rulers guests in his house. He was in his loge with his wife, Kate, and “my lucky charms this year, the family of Marc Bergevin.”
Molson, his companions, the bulging arena and a Canadiens fan base that knows no borders were sparing more than one thought for injured goalie Price, who drove the Habs bus to where it parked for Game 2.
“Carey’s done a lot for us,” Molson said. “Now it’s time for us to do something for him.”
Say, in a New York minute.