Carey Price wasn't interested in any of the obvious storylines after a big win in his home province. The Montreal Canadiens' goalie didn't want to talk about his 39-save performance in a 4-1 win against the Vancouver Canucks. He wasn't interested in discussing the fans chanting his name, or winning a Canadian Olympic crease showdown with Roberto Luongo. All that mattered to Price was the victory.
"Everybody is trying to twist this another
way. All it was is two hockey teams playing against each other,"
Price said after taking a rare visitor victory lap as the game's
First Star. "I don't want to accept all the credit. We played
an excellent third period, our special teams played really well, we
blocked a ton of shots - it was a complete effort by everybody."
Everybody else, however, pointed back to Price -
and a fluke shorthanded goal that became the game-winner - as the
difference.
"Wow," said Lars Eller, who was
credited with the shorthanded winner despite almost being back on the
bench when the Canucks put the puck into their own net. "It's
probably the best hockey I've seen [Price] play, and that says a lot.
He kept us in the game. I don't know how. Halfway through, two
periods through, he has the single reason that we were even this
game. Unbelievable performance."
Eller's tie-breaking goal was even harder to
believe. Eller was the last player to touch the puck on a dump-in
while killing a penalty, but there wasn't a Montreal player below the
hash marks when Dan Hamhuis lost it off the skate of Jason Garrison
near the goal line to the left of Roberto Luongo. The goalie had his
back to play as the puck bounced off both his skates and trickled
over the goal line with Hamhuis, filling in for suspended defenseman
Alex Edler on the power play, fishing for it.
"I didn't see it. I didn't see it,"
said a visibly frustrated Luongo. "They didn't show it on the
Jumbotron. You guys tell me what happened. I don't even know what
happened. I left it for our guys and was looking up ice to get back
to my net and all of a sudden it's in the back of my net."
Asked if he'd ever given up a more bizarre game-winner, Luongo said,
"I didn't give that up, so I can't tell you."
Tomas Plekanec opened the scoring on a power play
5:43 into the game, and Max Pacioretty made it 3-1 on Montreal's
second power-play chance 6:46 into the third. They were the first two
extra-man goals surrendered by the Canucks after 18 straight penalty
kills to start the season. Defenseman Josh Gorges, who like Price was
playing in his home province, rounded out the scoring on a point shot
through traffic with 7:35 left as Montreal won its second straight on
a four-game Western Canadian road trip that ends Tuesday against the
Winnipeg Jets. But after playing without captain Brian Gionta, who
was attending to a family issue back in Montreal, all the Canadiens
could talk about after was Price, who saw 31 shots through the first
40 minutes.
"Seems like [Price] was the only guy who
showed up early in the game so it's nice to reward him with a win
like that," said Pacioretty, who was stopped on a penalty
shot 1:30 into the third period. "We wish we could have got
him a shutout for how well he played."
Price may have dismissed coming home, but his
coach didn't. "He was outstanding," Michel Therrien
said. "Certainly it was extra motivation to play in front of
his family and friends. I'm really happy for him that he was able to
play that way. He was in the zone."
Henrik Sedin scored the lone goal and Luongo
finished 34 saves for the Canucks, who never seemed to recover from
the own goal. The way Price was playing, it may not have mattered.
The Canucks had several great chances to tie it while outshooting the
Canadiens 14-9 in the opening period, but Price made a couple of
outstanding rebound saves to keep Montreal ahead. He slid right to
left and extended his glove over his pad to take an empty net away
from Garrison on a power play midway through the period, and
scrambled to his right to get a piece of a similar Daniel Sedin
chance with five minutes left in the first, prompting chants of
"Carey, Carey" from a crowd littered with red, white and
blue Canadiens jerseys.
"Just desperation, trying to battle and
get a piece of it," Price said.
Luongo responded with a couple of excellent stops
off David Desharnais five minutes into the second, but Price answered
that with five stops on a Vancouver power play before the Canucks
finally tied it.
"He was awesome," Daniel Sedin
said. "He made some saves where I think a lot of people in
the building thought it was going to be goals, so he played great and
we have to bear down when we get the chances."
Vancouver didn't generate many opportunities after
Hamhuis put it in his own net. "I was picking up the puck and
it just clipped Jason's skate and ended up in Lu's feet and in the
net," Hamhuis said. "It's a tough break."
The Canucks didn't even manage a shot the first
half of the third period, dropping the final two games of a
three-game homestand as they prepare to hit the road for the next
seven games.
"It's bizarre," Garrison said. "A
lot of unfortunate bounces sometimes and you have to get by it. It
felt like we had momentum."
There was none after the goal, as Montreal finally
tightened up.
"We just had to weather the storm the
first couple periods," Price said. "We got lucky
along the way and in the third we shut them down."
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