Montreal Canadiens: Relax and Give Carey Price a Break

Montreal Canadiens Goaltender Carey Price has seen his stats decline over the past month. However, there is no need for anyone to panic over his play.

Thursday night was absolutely horrendous showing by the Montreal Canadiens, as they lost seven to one against the Minnesota Wild. As a result of the amount of goals against the Habs suffered, the spotlight was immediately placed on Carey Price. In fact, when any Goalie who allows seven goals against in one game, it’s viewed as an embarrassment.

To make matters worse, the Canadiens have allowed a lot goals lately, and Price has been in net most of the time. In fact, Price has allowed more than three goals in six of his last seven starts. During those seven games Price has an abnormally low 0.894 save percentage.

However, Price should not be blamed for the the recent drop in save percentage, or spike in goals against. The real blame should be placed on the defensive structure that has been in front of him.

Struggling Defense

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In particular, the defensive play of Jeff Petry and Nathan Beaulieu has been awful the last two games. Both of these players were each a minus three in Thursday nights game. Both players have had breakdowns in communication, and have left opposing players wide open in the slot.

Petry and Beaulieu have been solid together, since Defensemen Andrei Markov got injured. Also, if Petry and Beaulieu had a bad defensive shift, they usually could make it up later in the game offensively. However, this wasn’t the case the last few games for Petry and Beaulieu.

For example, watch the video below, and on

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that the Wild score, watch the positioning of Beaulieu and Petry. See if they are in the right place at the right time, or if their was a breakdown in their defensive assignments.

Clearly, their was a few breakdowns in assignments, and the two Defensemen were caught out of place. However, as stated before, Beaulieu and Petry haven’t been this poor all season, but it’s happened a lot in the last few games. Other goals that were scored on Price were the results of deflections in front, and these shots are highly difficult to stop.

Absence of Markov and Pateryn

One of the main reasons for the lack of structure on defense, has been because of injuries to the Habs defense corps. Defensemen Andrei Markov and Greg Pateryn have been out of the lineup for multiple weeks. Also, both of these Defenders are steady reliable players in their own zone.

The injuries have caused Petry and Beaulieu to play together, when they are both the same type of player. They both want to jump up into the rush, and are both excellent offensive Defensemen. However, they’re not known as shutdown Defenders.

If the injuries wouldn’t have happened, Markov and Pateryn would both be providing balance to the Habs defense corps. The Coaching staff should have balanced their defense pairings when the injuries happened.

For example, Head Coach Michel Therrien could have put Beaulieu with Shea Weber, and then put Alexei Emelin with Jeff Petry. These pairings would have great defensive Defensemen, with offensive minded Defensemen.

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Final Thoughts

Either way, Carey Price isn’t the one to blame for the Canadiens recent spike in goals against. The Habs need to fix the structure up in front him, and then the goals against per game will drop.