CANADIENS
Montreal

3-1

HURRICANES
Carolina

Game Notes:

Price for Hart. It is difficult to adequately quantify how much Carey Price has contributed to the Canadiens success. It is clear that both Michel Therrien and Marc Bergevin have benefited, as Price’s performances hide so many of the team’s flaws.  It occurred again on Monday night as the Canadiens struggled against the second worst team in the NHL. After a relatively even first period, the Canadiens let the Hurricanes dominate. Shots were 13-4 for Carolina in the third period. Was it not for Price, this game could have resulted in an embarrassing loss.

Price has an incredible save percentage of .956 in his last seven starts.

Smoke and mirrors.  While the Canadiens have improved their goal differential, the all-important shooting differential remains in the negative. This is one more measure that points to the value of Carey Price.  Montreal is ranked 23rd in the league giving up on average about three more shots per game than they take.

Clutch. Lars Eller is unfairly targeted for hate by a certain segment of the fanbase mostly for the player he displaces in the lineup.  But Marc Bergevin will tell you, he is the player on the Canadiens roster who other GMs covet.  Eller is big, skilled, strong on his skates and is one of the Habs best defensive forwards.  Eller scored his fifth game-winning goal against Carolina. He is tied for the league lead in that category with Chicago’s Patrick Kane.  The goal was also the 21,000th in Canadiens franchise history. Eller was also a team-leading plus-3 on the night.

Plus / Minus

▲▲   Carey Price

▲    Max Pacioretty, Jiri Sekac, Lars Eller, Andrei Markov, Nathan Beaulieu, Dale Weise

▼    P.K. Subban, P.A. Parenteau, Alex Galchenyuk

1.  Carey Price MTL
2.  Jiri Sekac  MTL
3.  Eric Staal  CAR

• “[Jiri Sekac] was hungry and he was quick to the puck and made good decisions.”

Max Pacioretty

• “It’s the same story every night. We’re used to [Carey Price] bailing us out, but we have to play better in front of him. We love that he’s playing so well, but in this room, we all know we owe him a couple of games and a lot of goals. Hopefully down the road we can do that for him, but he’s the story every night. He’s the MVP tonight.”
• “I can sit here and say the same thing about him every game. It’s not like he’s improving in one area or he’s got areas to improve. [Carey Price] is rock solid every single night. Every night we know we’ve got Carey backing us up and we have to be better for him. Hopefully that time comes where we can steal a game for him.”

Lars Eller

• “He’s being modest. That’s one of the things about Carey: he’s an absolute superstar, but he’s a very humble person and very modest. That’s one of the reasons he’s so well liked in this room. He’s so poised and confident and he makes the difference for us in so many games between winning and losing. He did that again tonight.”

Hurricanes forward Jiri Tlusty

• “Give credit to Price, he played well again. We have to bear down and be hungry in front of the net.”

Hurricanes forward Riley Nash

• “I had a couple of chances tonight that I’d like to have back. Price made some big saves. It would have been big early on for us to have the lead. But he’s a world-class goalie and he got the better of me.”

Hurricanes coach Bill Peters

• “We had the power play we didn’t score on, and they scored as soon as the guy comes out of the box, so that’s a huge turning point in the game. The second one, it looks like we’re there, but we’re not.”