Jacques Plante and Carey Price filling different amounts of the net
Price has done that in a big way this season, coming off the weakest campaign of his career. In 2017-18, he went 16-26-7 with a .900 save percentage and 3.11 goals-against average. This season, in the first year of an eight-year contract extension, he's 27-19-5, .916, 2.54.
"As an athlete in general, I think a lot of us are wired to want to obviously perform at a peak level and last year I didn't feel I did that," Price said during a recent talk at his team's practice rink. "This year I feel we're all playing better, it's not just myself. I feel like my consistency is back and I feel that our team game is more consistent, too."
A year ago, Price sat in his team's dressing room to discuss catching Plante for most franchise games played by a goalie at 556. A portrait of Plante was overhead 11 stalls down, one of eight Hall of Fame Canadiens goalies so celebrated.
Price admitted at the time that "I don't know an awful lot (about Plante), to be honest," though he's learned more as he's closed the games-won gap.
He might have discovered that Plante was renowned for his puck-handling skills, one of Price's strengths. In fact, Plante often had so little faith in the ability of his defense to clear the puck that he'd do so himself, roaming wide into the corners and up to the face-off circles and farther to feed his forwards. Jake the Snake, as Plante was nicknamed, wouldn't be a fan of the trapezoid.