What We Learned: Uh-oh rest of NHL, Carey Price is heating up

(Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.)

For a little while there, the Montreal Canadiens looked vulnerable.

This has been a solid team all year, but there were plenty of questions to be asked about how their all-world goalie was going to hold up. This was, after all, his first time back from what was basically a year-long injury battle, and those who were skeptical that he’d be able to keep up his high-level performances are probably starting to get a bit of whiplash.

He was nearly unbeatable In the first two months of the season, going .947 in 16 games to start the year (this after a strong albeit not-very-busy World Cup). Then it became time to start asking questions about workload, because he went a dismal .899 in December and .906 in January.

The Habs unsurprisingly started to slip around that time, despite good play up front. Price went from being the biggest reason by far the Habs made the playoffs two years ago to being a huge liability that cost them plenty of points in a divisional race that seemed to be getting unexpectedly more interesting than it should have been.

But they’ve not settled in comfortably to the first-place spot in the Atlantic and are only four points behind Pittsburgh and Columbus, and are enjoying what is now a five-game winning streak after they lost eight of their previous 10. Price is a big reason why.

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He played four of those games and allowed just four goals, going .964 in this brief stretch. And while any goaltender on earth can have four good appearances in a row, Price has been playing well for a lot longer than that; even when they were losing in early and mid-February, he started to creep above league average again.

Let’s put it this way: In his last 16 games, Price is a very good .926. In the 16 before that, he was .889. That’s obviously a huge swing, and unfortunately for the rest of the Eastern Conference, the odds that Price continues to be .920-plus instead of below .890 seem incredibly good.

So the question, then, is what changed? For one thing, his save percentages on both low- and medium-quality shots on goal have risen sharply after weirdly steep drop-offs.

Obviously there’s plenty of reason to suspect a lot of the recent change boils down to the dismissal of Michel Therrien and the hiring of a much better coach in Claude Julien. The Canadiens are unsurprisingly playing a lot tighter in their own end these days and allowing Price to see more shots from farther out. That helps pad out the save percentage a lot, and certainly a big reason the numbers have improved. But across all shot types, Price is just playing better these days.

Price’s real problem when he was losing a lot of hockey games was that his medium- and high-danger save percentages at 5-on-5 cratered at the same time, and even when they didn’t he started allowing more low-danger goals. It’s a bad combination, obviously, and you’ll never guess what: The number of shots from anywhere close to the net has dropped sharply under Julien.

This was always the danger for anyone hoping to sneak past a still-slumping Price at some point in the playoffs. Julien’s defensive coaching acumen is one that makes good goalies into great ones, and great ones into world-beaters and record-setters. His system has actually changed a lot over the past few years but it was always tough for him to get anything less than average goaltending even in the worst of times. Putting him together with Price always carried with it the likelihood that goals against would dry up quickly.

What the Eastern Conference absolutely didn’t need was Price rounding back into Vezina form. Even though too much of the season is gone by (and other performances just too dominant) to actually get him the trophy, the fact that he might play the last month-plus of the year in the .925-to-.930 range is still going to get the Habs plenty of points. Moreover, anything approaching that level of performance probably gets them very deep into the playoffs.

The Habs are still a team with problems, sure. It’s tough to say who carries the puck out of their zone long-term. It’s probably not too much of a coincidence that Price’s save percentage was at its lowest points in the month and a half Andrei Markov missed; when you can’t get the puck up the ice effectively, you tend to turn it over in vulnerable positions and create scoring chances for the other team, to say nothing of the fact that you probably shouldn’t leave it to a 38-year-old to lug the puck for you in the first place.

In fact, if you look at the splits for Markov’s absence, Price was .936 prior to his injury, .898 during it, and is .923 since. Obviously it’s a little reductive to say, “Well, Price was only bad when Markov was hurt,” but there’s plenty of reason to suspect that an ineffective breakout would lead to lower save percentages. That much lower? Tough to say; probably not, but it’s definitely not going to help.

Point being, a healthy team in front of him and a top-four coach in the world was probably always going to help Price get back on track. So too was the simple passage of time. He just isn’t as bad as he showed for that six-week stretch. Not even close. Put another way, even with an abysmal stretch in December and January, Price is still tied for fourth in the league in save percentage among goalies with at least 45 appearances. That feels just about right given the talent level, and he’s probably going to close the gap between himself and the rest of the league, given who coaches him these days.

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The Canadiens have 16 regular-season games left. They’re not going to drop too many of them if Price is the Price we’ve all come to expect over those game. And then, well, anything can happen after that.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: Now this is a solid take.

Arizona Coyotes: The Coyotes love having all these draft picks. Why, it’s almost like they should have been tanking for years.

Boston Bruins: BRUINS WIN THE TRADE!!!!

Buffalo Sabres: There would be if they could ever win a dang shootout.

Calgary Flames: Speaking of goalies who are heating up a little bit, Brian Elliott hello.

Carolina Hurricanes: I saw some guys on NHL Network talking about how Bill Peters shouldn’t have called out Eddie Lack. Dude’s save percentage is .873. Like, how do you not call that out?

Chicago: This team’s propensity to just win regular-season games is nothing short of incredible. Also, sign me up for a Nashville/Chicago first-round matchup.

Colorado Avalanche: Oh my godddddddddddddd.

Columbus Blue Jackets: This is gonna surprise you but John Tortorella was involved in a controversial coaching decision in a loss. Since the big winning streak ended, Columbus has nine regulation wins in 27 games.

Dallas Stars: Hold on, John Klingberg scored AND Kari Lehtonen had a great game? What year is this?

Detroit Red Wings: This is the funniest thing you will read all year.

Edmonton Oilers: Yup, it’s a goal and an assist for McDavid again. Ho hum.

Florida Panthers: Watch a Panthers game these days. You’ll see they’re playing well. They also can’t get a W lately. That’s hockey I guess.

Los Angeles Kings: Yo, Ben Bishop was supposed to be the insurance policy, man.

Minnesota Wild: Yeah honestly I was a little surprised the Wild didn’t push a bit more all-in than they did. Hanzal helps, but I thought for sure more prospects would get moved.

Montreal Canadiens: Honestly I wouldn’t be too worried about Ottawa and Boston.

Nashville Predators: Be nice to have Ryan Ellis back, eh?

New Jersey Devils: I have a theory that this team just isn’t all that good. Correct me if I’m wrong.

New York Islanders: Yeah sure, I mean why not grind Thomas Greiss into dust?

New York Rangers: The Rangers were so freaked out by Saturday’s loss to Montreal that they recalled Tanner Glass about it. That’ll fix the problem.

Ottawa Senators: That’s my good boy again.

Philadelphia Flyers: Yeah sometimes it’s just like, what are ya gonna do? It’s the Capitals.

Pittsburgh Penguins: I think it’s honestly fine to have real penguins at a hockey game. That’s fun! But maybe it’s not fine to set off huge fireworks displays two inches from their heads. Just be nice to them. They’re so little and maybe you want to just scratch their bellies and feed them nice fish and be their friends? Instead of scaring them a lot just be nice?

San Jose Sharks: Yeah man I wouldn’t want to play the Sharks in the playoffs.

St. Louis Blues: What if firing one of the best coaches in hockey wasn’t a good idea? Oh I don’t know.

Tampa Bay Lightning: Here’s the most useless quote I have ever seen about salary cap management: “It depends on the type of contracts that we sign. The terms of their contracts that will affect the cap number.” Good stuff, Steve. Thanks.

Toronto Maple Leafs: Does this team have a “run” in it? I dunno man.

Vancouver Canucks: They’re “not dead yet” but it’s like one of those people who got pinned to a tree by a car and if you move the car that’s it.

Vegas Golden Knights: Oh I don’t know maybe.

Washington Capitals: The Caps keep on winning at home, folks. Pretty good team.

Winnipeg Jets: This goal, it was good.

Play of the Weekend

Come on dude. This isn’t fair.

Gold Star Award

I feel so bad for Robin Lehner, who’s having a great season (.922) and not getting much help.

Minus of the Weekend

That Avs game was truly a horrendous performance from everyone involved. Incredible.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Year

User “AdamParrot” is doing it right.

To Philadelphia: Matt Duchene

To Colorado: Shayne Gostisbehere, Sean Couturier, Robert Hägg

Signoff

Agh, my groin.

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Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All stats via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)

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