TORONTO — It’s a new year, a new opportunity, a new vibe and, in a lot of ways, a new team, but the one thing hasn’t changed for the Montreal Canadiens is that they will only go as far as goaltender Carey Price can take them.
That’s been the case since Price was officially handed the starter’s role in the fall of 2010, but it’s a more daunting reality for him to face now than it ever has been in the past.
And it’s not just that way because the Canadiens are in transition, embarking on a retool on the fly by incorporating younger players while latching onto certain veterans who will be expected to keep the team competitive enough to be in the playoff picture from October to April; it’s also largely to do with the fact that the 31-year-old Price is starting the first season of an eight-year, $84-million contract while trying to rebound from what was unquestionably the worst of his 11 years in the NHL.
Pressure? You bet. It’s the kind that would eat just about anyone alive.
But if it’s gnawing at Price, he’s not showing it.
“[Pressure] is a relative word, I guess,” he coolly said on Monday. “Obviously there’s always going to be expectations on you. Whether there’s a few more things added, it doesn’t really matter. I’m still trying to do my job and do it to the best of my ability.”
If Price can do that out of the gate, he’ll give this Canadiens team a fighting chance at being competitive for at least a little while.
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If he can be the guy who established himself as the consensus best goaltender in the world over a three-year period prior to last season — the guy who helped Canada to Olympic gold in 2014, the guy who swept the NHL’s most prestigious awards in 2015, the guy who pushed Canada over the top en route to a championship at the World Cup of Hockey in the fall of 2016, the guy who put up the NHL’s seventh-best save percentage and sixth-best goals-against average to the lead the Canadiens to an Atlantic Division title in the winter of 2017 — he might even do the unthinkable and get Montreal into this year’s playoffs.
But if Price falls even slightly short of reaching that extraordinarily high bar, the Canadiens seem destined to be a lottery team at the 2019 NHL Draft.
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Sure, they have come together well in training camp — posting a 4-3 record through exhibition and playing a much faster brand of hockey than the one that landed them in 28th place last year. They even seem poised to turn some heads with the level of buy-in they have shown since they first stepped on the ice three weeks ago.
But the Canadiens don’t have the talent to compete with the upper-echelon teams and they don’t have the depth to overcome injuries to role players, let alone one to a star like newly-appointed captain Shea Weber, whose recovery from off-season knee surgery could bleed until mid-December.
You have to wonder just how easily the six-foot-four goaltender can flip the switch and make up the difference.
Watching Price put up the 47th-best save percentage (.900) and 44th-best goals-against average (3.11) of any goaltender to start at least 20 games last season was one thing. Seeing how he appeared in establishing those numbers — over-crouching and making himself seem so much smaller than he actually is, over-sliding and losing his angles, and allowing rebounds at an unprecedented level — was another.
That Price looked more like that goaltender over this year’s pre-season than the one who torched the hockey world from 2014-17 suggests a quick turnaround just might not be in the cards for him.
If it isn’t, it would be a killer for a team that has some good juju going for it right now, one that desperately wants to avoid the type of bad start that torpedoed its season before 10 games were played a year ago.
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On Monday, Price intimated that he isn’t concerned about that, and that he isn’t sweating the .862 save percentage and 3.77 goals-against average he put up in four pre-season appearances.
“Obviously, statistic-wise, the last two games weren’t great,” he said of a 5-3 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs and a 3-0 loss to the Ottawa Senators. “But I feel like the overall process has been going well. I had a plan at the start of summer, at the end of last season, to come in here and feel good to go into the season, and I feel like I’ve taken all the right steps to do that. And I’m hoping that all the hard work will pay dividends going into these first few games.”
If it does, it would likely set Price up for the season he needs to have, and it would also give the Canadiens some much-needed peace of mind.
That peace of mind could help free up the offence to do much better than the one that finished with the 29th-most goals in the NHL last season. It can really steady the defence, which allowed the seventh-most goals against.
But even if the players in front of Price hold up their end of the bargain and gather momentum from a strong start he offers, a successful season for the Canadiens rests squarely on his ability to consistently carry the mail. There’s nothing new about that.
