Former Canadiens Defenseman Had Big Praise For Price

Anyone who followed the Montreal Canadiens in the 2010s will remember Carey Price and P.K. Subban celebrating team wins with their trademarked celebration, “the triple low five,” until Michel Therrien forbade it, calling it too individualistic. Therrien couldn’t control the players’ friendship or the close bond that linked Price and Subban.

As two high-profile athletes in Montreal, big pieces of the Canadiens back then, they both attracted a lot of attention and coverage, and when Subban spoke to NHL.com last week, he made a valid point about just how big Price was in Montreal:

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I don’t think the Canadiens will see a goaltender who will be talked about more than Carey Price until someone wins a Stanley Cup in that city. And even then, it may not happen. To come into the NHL the way he did, to be in the net at that young age, to go through everything that, as a young professional, he went through, to be under the microscope in Montreal?

Nobody -- nobody who reads this -- would be prepared to deal with that. They have no idea what it’s like to be in that position. He handled all that stuff, and he performed. To me, that’s remarkable. That’s more of a testament to who he is as a person than even hoisting the Stanley Cup, to a certain degree.

The former blueliner isn’t wrong. Back then, when you went to the Bell Centre for a game, you could see jerseys numbered 31 left, right, and center. At one point, Price said he couldn’t even go food shopping anymore, and it seemed like a lot for him, but he kept going and dealt with it. Lesser men would have called it quits and asked for a trade, saying they couldn’t deal with the pressure anymore, but not Price. Yes, he did once tell the media to “chill out” in a memorable preseason post-game scrum, but most of the time it looked like none of it affected him, no matter how much pressure or attention he got.

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