Price fluctuation real concern for Canadiens
When Carey Price first introduced himself to the larger hockey world, he was enjoying an amazing emergence.
He was playing for the Canadians at the time — specifically, the Canadian entry at the 2007 world junior championships — and the results were stunning to behold.
Allowing just seven goals in six games while winning tournament MVP on the gold-medal trip, Price looked poised under enormous pressure.
He also had a back story you couldn’t make up. A lover of horses and country music from the rugged interior of British Columbia, he told reporters how he had spent much of his youth commuting to hockey rinks in his father’s small plane — a $14,000 Piper Cherokee Price described as a “lawnmower with wings.”
Snow would fly. Winds would howl. Near disaster would ensue. And yet, rather than make a 31⁄ 2drive over winding roads, Jerry and Carey Price would unfailingly hop in the family aircraft to get from hometown Anahim Lake to practice and play in Williams Lake.
“Any landing you walk away from is a good landing,” Jerry told the Star back in 2007.
“I thought it was fun,” was Carey’s takeaway from his airborne youth.
Fast forward a half-dozen years and Price’s fortunes still appear to be attached to the whims of some unpredictable winds, no matter that he travels in decidedly rarer air.
Price’s Montreal Canadiens spent the first couple of months of this 48-game campaign being heralded as one of the NHL’s great turnaround stories.
Michel Therrien, in his second tenure behind the Habs’ bench, was seen as a top candidate for coach of the year. P.K. Subban, an early holdout, was a Norris Trophy favourite. And Price was often cited as the bedrock on which the franchise is built. But the latter half of April has turned what looked like a rocketship renaissance into something resembling a crash landing. Before the Canadiens won 4-2 in Winnipeg on Thursday night, they had lost five of their previous six games by a combined score of 26-11. The team’s defenders can blame dressing-room disinterest — Montreal clinched its post-season berth back on April 11 and their collapse commenced from there. But more critical eyes see an over-achieving team buckling under the weight of its one and only run-in with adversity. Exactly which one of those assessments is more correct will begin being put to the test at the Air Canada Centre on Saturday night, when a pair of ancient rivals will engage in a regular-season finale that could double as a preview of the first Toronto-Montreal playoff meeting since 1979. Whatever team these Canadiens turn out to be, it’s clear the Maple Leafs are not particularly awed by the probable prospect of facing them in a best-of-seven first-round set. “We’re bigger and stronger than (the Canadiens),” Joffrey Lupul, the Leafs winger, told reporters on Friday. Certainly the Leafs, who lead the league in hits and fighting majors and penalty minutes, are the more imposing squad. Certainly they’ve suffered their own version of a late-season swoon. But neither physicality nor current form is likely to be as big a factor in a possible playoff series than the respective quality of goaltending. Toronto’s James Reimer, though he has never played in an NHL playoff game, has carried the Leafs to their first post-season since 2004 by compiling a .926 save percentage — fifth best among goaltenders with 20 or more starts. Though Price’s reputation has made him a front-runner to be Canada’s goaltender at the 2014 Olympics, his .905 save rate this season can convince you his legend is more imposing than his presence. Montreal’s discerning, reactive fan base has been non-plussed enough by his work to boo him at the Bell Centre. Canadiens alternate captain Josh Gorges has defended Price from the merciless mob: “Mocking someone doesn’t help.”
Stopping more pucks certainly would.
Two Saturdays ago at the Air Canada Centre, Price was chased after allowing three goals on four shots. A game later, he allowed two goals on Philadelphia’s first five shots and was eventually lifted after surrendering six goals on 29 shots.
If Price’s recent penchant for helplessly swimming in his crease isn’t a comforting image for Habs fans, neither is an 11th-hour uptick in his performance.
Therrien recently called Price Montreal’s “best player.” Someone watching from a distance can only surmise that if that’s the truth, the Habs are in trouble. Or maybe they’re not. Playoff goaltending, after all, is something of an unknowable crapshoot. Reimer has been great most of the season, but he’s an unproven quantity in a Stanley Cup bracket.
As much as Price has been pedestrian, the Canadiens can approach the post-season knowing he has a history of coming up huge in important moments. When last the Canadiens made the playoffs — a seven-game, first-round series loss to the Bruins in 2011 — Price put in a strong showing, with a .934 save percentage and a 2.11 goals-against average.
But Price, all told, has largely struggled in the playoffs, where he has an 8-15 career win-loss record.
His clutch work at the world junior tournament in 2007, in other words, has proven difficult to repeat in the pro world, where the private planes are decidedly posher but where the goaltenders blow with the breeze.