Carey Price remains 'regular guy' despite extension with Canadiens

MONTREAL -- The story is five years old, but Jill Williams, Carey Price's junior-hockey den mother for four seasons, says it perfectly captures the Montreal Canadiens goaltender both then and now.
Price was in search of a shedding blade for his two Labrador retrievers, a brush he had used on his rodeo horses in British Columbia. With out-of-date information found on the Internet, he found himself at the address of a long-ago closed shop in a sleepy village 20 miles west of his home south of Montreal.

Purely by chance, Price found the brush in a pet shop a block from the shuttered store, then walked across the street to a convenience store to buy a soft drink for the drive home. He was 25 cents short, the store wouldn't take his credit card and the impatient cashier didn't recognize the Canadiens' cornerstone player whose face was featured on the team's pocket calendar which sat atop the register.
So rather than play the "don't you recognize me?" card for the drink, Price went back out to his truck and for 10 minutes rummaged around the creases of his seat and beneath the floor mats looking for the quarter that wasn't to be found.
"So I drove home without a soft drink," Price said with a grin, recounting the story. "I was pretty choked."
Jill Williams laughed about the story Sunday afternoon, Price having just agreed to an eight-year contract extension with the Canadiens, the only NHL team for which he's played.
She had heard about the contract extension on Sunday by notification from a hockey website, so she texted her former house guest for confirmation.
"Carey replied, 'Yup,'" she said. "And that was it. He doesn't get excited about much."

Jill and Dennis Williams saw that firsthand from 2003-07 when they were Price's billet family in Pasco, Washington, when he played for Tri-City of the Western Hockey League.
The Williamses welcomed Price as a 16-year-old, dropped off by his parents, Linda and Jerry, who entrusted them with playing a vital role in their son's upbringing.
They would see him selected by Montreal with the fifth pick in the 2005 NHL Draft, carry the Americans to a record season, win a trapper full of awards and return from Europe as a 2007 World Junior champion, having brilliantly backstopped Canada.
"That was as excited as I've seen Carey, ever," Jill Williams said of his gold-medal performance in Sweden.
During the 2008-09 NHL season, the Willamses made a trip to Montreal to watch Price play for the Canadiens, staying in an apartment he shared with friend and then-teammate Kyle Chipchura. Jill was shocked to watch Price take inventory of his fridge, which didn't look much like what he'd had the run of in Pasco: "Two cans of beer, a few canned soups, some chocolate eggs and probably a lot of condiments."
It's for that reason she bought him a grill, a pantry's worth of groceries and made him steak and potatoes on the first night of their visit.
Price is eating better these days, enjoying the home cooking of his wife, Angela. But despite the goalie's enormous fame and fortune, Williams still sees him a little like the peach-fuzzed teenager who arrived on her doorstep 14 years ago.
Last week, Price dropped back into Pasco from his summer home in Kelowna, British Columbia, and enjoyed some success fishing with Dennis Williams.
If few see it in the mannerisms of the never-too-high, never-too-low goaltender, Jill Williams said Price has "a heck of a sense of humor. The last time we were in Montreal, and I don't even remember what we were talking about, he said, 'That's makes about as much sense as having an elevator in an outdoor toilet.' He says some very weird things."

It was on April 8, 2007 that Price sat at a table in the Williams home and read all nine pages of his three-year entry-level rookie contract, signing it to begin his professional career.
Three days later he was in a hotel room in Hamilton, Ontario, on the eve of his pro debut for Hamilton of the American Hockey League, when he made 27 saves in a 3-1 win, earning first star of the game.
The first dollars he spent as a professional, he said that day, "were two bottles of water at the airport on my way here. I'd like to buy a truck, but other than that, I don't have any real needs."
With his new contract, there is virtually nothing that Price cannot buy.
"He'll be 30 this year and I've known him since he was 16. If he can go to a different store to save five bucks, he'll still do it," Williams said. "He likes to do things for charity, and he doesn't spend money like he's a millionaire.
"I think in the years that I've known him, he's matured into a very wonderful adult. Carey is just a regular guy."