Habs sticking with Price

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This article was published 03/07/2021 (1616 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MONTREAL — Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures. But the Montreal Canadiens won’t be employing the nuclear option with their season on the line.

“Carey’s the guy playing Monday. If you wonder or people wonder about who’s going to be in net, Carey’s gonna be in net,” Habs coach Dominique Ducharme said Saturday.

A week ago, the concept of benching future Hall of Famer Carey Price in favour of backup Jake Allen would have been inconceivable. But Price, the backbone of this Cinderella ride to the Stanley Cup Final, hasn’t been himself during the first three games against the Tampa Bay Lightning.

He was beaten five times on 27 shots in Game 1. Three times on 23 shots in Game 2. And five times on 29 shots in Game 3. Add it all up and that’s a ghastly 4.39 goals-against-average and .835 save percentage. Most concerning, it’s a 3-0 deficit for the Canadiens in the best-of-seven series, who must now win four straight elimination games beginning Monday night at Bell Centre.

“You can talk about one guy or another guy. It’s about all of us. It’s about all of us. We need to be better in front of him. Everyone. All 20 guys putting on the jersey are looking for, Monday night, playing their best game. That’s it,” Ducharme said.

Finding a way to quit turning over the puck would be a good start, as would solving Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy who has stopped 92 of the 97 shots he’s faced. To that end, Ducharme wouldn’t rule out the possibility of other lineup changes. Forwards Tomas Tatar and Jake Evans, and defenceman Alexander Romanov would be the most likely options.

“Too early to tell, but we’re looking at every situation right now,” said Ducharme.

Only one team, the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs, has ever come back from being down 3-0 in the Cup Final to win the championship. But Ducharme has done it once before on a smaller stage, in 2012 with the Halifax Mooseheads of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. More recently, the Canadiens rallied from a 3-1 disadvantage in the opening round against Toronto, winning two straight overtime games and then the winner-take-all seventh game.

“First of all, you can’t look too far ahead. You look at the mountain and it looks pretty high, but there are steps you have to take. The first step for us is we have a game to win at home (Monday). And if anyone thinks we’re just going to disappear and just let this go, well they don’t know us very well. We’re going to fight. We’re going to fight Monday night for the win. Right now that’s all we’re thinking about,” said Ducharme.

“Our group has been going through so much. There’s nothing normal about this year. Look at the regular season, look at things that happened in the playoffs with us. There’s nothing normal. (We’re in) a situation that is again, unusual. But we showed that we don’t shy away from challenges.”

Of course, standing in their way is a powerhouse Tampa team that might just be the closest thing to a modern-day dynasty. It doesn’t hurt that they are way over the US$81.5 million salary cap, thanks to activating Nikita Kucherov just in time for the playoffs (where the cap no longer applies) after spending the entire regular-season on long-term injured reserve.

Kucherov is lapping the field in scoring right now, with 32 points (eight goals and 24 assists) in 21 games. He’s the No. 1 candidate to take home the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP, although Vasilevskiy and forward Brayden Point (playoff-best 14 goals) have strong cases as well.

“Having a taste of the Stanley Cup last year was definitely awesome, and I think the guys really want to relive that,” Lightning forward Mathieu Joseph, a native of Laval, said Saturday.

The 24-year-old is a prime example of this organization’s depth — a guy who would likely be a regular on any other team in the league, but is only in the lineup right now due to an injury to Alex Killorn. And the idea of winning it all against his hometown team, the one he grew up cheering for, is pretty sweet.

“We’re going to have to have a big game Monday, the fourth game is always the hardest one to win,” said Joseph.

“I’m trying to not to think too much about that, we have a plan that we need to execute and we have to give everything for that game. But for sure, it’s exciting. It’s a great opportunity, as I said. But we still have a lot of work to do.”

Perhaps Montreal’s best hope right now is that the Lightning take their foot off the gas a bit, hoping to instead capture the Cup in front of family members, friends and a sold-out crowd back at Amalie Arena later in the week.

This is a team, after all, that downed Dallas last summer inside otherwise empty Rogers Place in the hub city Edmonton as part of the bubble. They are facing an eerily similar situation here in Montreal’, where they are confined to their hotel room and had to get special permission from the federal government even to cross the border without quarantine.

“We’re just back in the bubble scenario again. It’s just a different hotel,” said Tampa coach Jon Cooper.

“If we were going into this the first time, it would most certainly be different. But we spent 65 days in this exact same environment and thrived in it. You know what to expect. There’s no complaining. There’s no ‘I can’t believe we can’t go outside,’ especially when you look out and everybody’s walking around maskless and living their lives, especially to me one of the greatest cities in the world. But this is a business trip for us. We’re here to work. We know that there’ll be other times to really enjoy Montreal.”

A business trip that could end with a shiny souvenir accompanying them for the flight back to Florida.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg