Carey Price will have to be right if the Canadiens are going to climb back into Cup final

MONTREAL—It was always going to come down to Carey Price.

If the Montreal Canadiens are going to join the 1942 Maple Leafs as the only teams in Stanley Cup final history to trail three games to none and come back to win, they will need Price to be at his absolute best.

He will need to be the Price who stonewalled Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner in the first round, and the Price who outdueled Vegas’s tandem of Marc-André Fleury and Robin Lehner in the semifinals. Those two won the Jennings Trophy given to the goaltenders on the team that allowed the fewest goals. Fleury picked up the Vezina as the top goalie in the league.

Price and the Canadiens are struggling against the best team they have played yet, the Tampa Bay Lightning, and a goalie in Andrei Vasilevskiy who is stubbornly on top of his game.

How’s Price? “I can definitely play better,” he said. “Just not good enough so far.”

Price was a favourite for the Conn Smythe Trophy as the post-season MVP when the final began. Montreal needed merely two or three goals to win a game in the first three rounds, that’s how good he was. The Canadiens were 11-0 in games in which they scored at least two goals. They’re 12th win was a 1-0 shutout.

But, on Friday, the Canadiens scored three times and lost 6-3. Price allowed five. His save percentage through the first three games of the final is .835.

For a team with a popgun offence, their reliance on goaltending was more than a fact, it was a strategy, the foundation upon which the team was built.

The Canadiens are scoring 2.4 goals a game, 12th among the 16 playoff teams. The Leafs, by the way, scored 2.57 and ought to be taking notes on how Tampa Bay is managing to screen Price to make him look foolish.

Montreal’s strategy isn’t changing. Too late for that.

If you’re wondering, there is zero chance Jake Allen will start instead of Price in Monday’s Game 4.

“Carey’s the guy playing Monday,” Canadiens head coach Dominique Ducharme said. “Yeah, you can talk about one guy or another guy, it’s about all of us. We need to be better in front of him. All 20 guys putting on the jersey are looking (at) playing their best game.”

Price can no longer be considered a favourite for the Smythe. That would be the Lightning’s Nikita Kucherov, who leads the playoffs with 32 points, or maybe Brayden Point, who leads the playoffs in goals with 14, or maybe Vasilevskiy, who leads all goalies with a .938 save percentage.

There have been lots of heroes on the Tampa side.

“They have been scoring on all four lines. They’re a deep lineup. They bring offence from the (defencemen) and the forwards — every line,” Ducharme said. “Against any good players, you want to take time and space away. I’m not saying that we’re doing a perfect job right now. They’re good players, but we’ve done some good things, and we know that we can be better.”

There seems to be a sense fans are ready to move on in Montreal. This was fun, great to be back in the Stanley Cup final and all that, but Tampa Bay is simply too good, too much.

There have been only questions on the Canadiens side. Why are they making so many mistakes all of a sudden? Can one or two of the healthy scratches make a difference? Are they tired, or worn out mentally?

“I don’t sense any fatigue physically or mentally,” Ducharme said. “I think it’s a matter of managing the game. When you’re trailing, you have a tendency of pushing a little bit more and forcing a little bit more, and you make a little bit (riskier) plays. Risk and reward. Those types of teams can make you pay.

“Right now we’re playing the best team we’ve played so far. So everything that we do is just a little bit more difficult because we’re playing a good team.”

While Ducharme admitted Saturday he is considering roster changes, Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper was telling his players simply to relax and recuperate. They’re on a special run, a chance to be a team that wins the Cup two years in a row.

“It’s a bond that this group has carried together for the last two years,” Cooper said. “It’s special. It just doesn’t come around very often. I think the players, they know this. That’s why it doesn’t take a whole ton to motivate this group.”

But he’s also not counting out the Montreal Canadiens.

“Can’t count a team out that’s got Carey Price in the net,” Cooper said.

Coming to the four

Hey, it’s been a strange year and stranger things have happened: The Montreal Canadiens can take heart that there have been four times when an NHL team has rallied to win a best-of-seven playoff series after losing the first three games.