Going Carey Crazy

Anyone else feeling the Carey Price buzz? He's only a 19-year-old, a whole two months younger than me, yet he's accomplished just about every feat he's faced this season.

He led his CHL team, the Tri-City Americans, to the playoffs after three consecutive disappointing seasons. It’s not that Price was bad early in his CHL career, he just didn't have the team in front of him.

However, his final minor-league season would see him bring home the CHL's best goalie award before packing his bag for Hamilton where he'd see two regular season starts with a solid Bulldogs' team in front of him.

To understand Price's ability to lead the 'Dogs to a Calder Cup victory, one must look back at the 2007 U-20 World Junior Championships. It was during that stint that the young goaltender learned what real pressure was, and furthermore, how to handle it. In overcoming the pressure, Price was named the Tournament MVP and top goalie.

Price had it easy in Hamilton when you think about it. Games weren't televised to a national audience observing his every move from the edge of their seats. No, instead Price would turn in home ice wins at the Copps Coliseum to a mere couple thousand fans compared to the millions upon millions who watched him capture gold at the World Juniors this past January. Once again, he earned MVP honors as the AHL playoff's best player.

While he hasn't proved anything at the NHL level just yet, it's hard not to feel confident that the Montreal Canadiens have in their system yet another one of the best goalies to play the game.

Personally, I can't help but expect Carey Price to leap-frog Jaroslav Halak or Cristobal Huet on the depth chart this upcoming fall. It's also not hard to believe that he may just grab the starting role sooner rather than later.

Maybe I'm just feeling the Carey craze right now and he's not actually that close. What do you think?

Atmosphere in Hockeytown is pathetic...

While watching today's uneventful 3-1 Calgary Flames loss to the Detroit Red Wings that will put Calgary down 2 games to none, it really struck me at how bad the atmosphere in the old Joe Louis Arena is.

You wanna know how bad it is?

If you watched CBC's broadcast of the game at 1:00 PM today, you can tell from the start the crowd wasn't into it.

After Pavel Datsyuk scored yet again barely over a minute into the game, the crowd exalted a kind of tired cheer, as if they were exhausted of watching this happen.
The siren, the siren in the so-called "Hockeytown" rink, was also kind of silent, what was supposed to follow a blaring deafening horn was a shriek of happiness from the crowd.

But no.

I swear, I've never seen anything so dull in my life.

There was nothing, the crowd gave nothing to the Red Wings, they gave them no support whatsoever and were "calm" on missed calls by the officials.

Maybe I'm just used to the out-of-this-world atmosphere at my local sold-out Bell Centre, where the croud is LOUD.

Where you feel like you're in the game, where you feel the passion that the fans are showing their team, that the team feels and gets pumped up by.

It makes me wonder sometimes how the Detroit Red Wings can be such a dominating team without any energy shown by their fans, it's like, the fans don't even try to "inspire" the Wings to per say come back from a 2 goal deficit, or try to re-energize them by showing them they have confidence in them.

Whatever, it's sad to see such a great team have such a pathetic crowd.

The arena is not filling up very much either, and that also makes me wonder if they feel more pumped on the road; the Red Wings draw the most fans on the road in the whole NHL and they are louder in a place like Minnesota or Nashville, than at home in Detroit.

I also hear that, surprisingly, the Saddledome isn't as great as it looks.
Man, that place looked awesome back when the Flames made it all the way to the Cup Final...

I'm sure going to Joe Louis Arena is nice because of the history, but, I don't know if I'd feel like going every night if it was empty or dull.

-Sherry has a nice array of Price pictures from his pro debut.
It's really worth checking out as you won't find this many Price pictures in Hamilton on the web for probably another year and a half.

Time to watch the Sens and Pens, and then hit the books again...

Canadiens lock up Price...

The Montreal Canadiens have signed former world junior star Carey Price to a three-year contract. As per club policy, financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Price will join the Canadiens AHL farm team in Hamilton today.
The Bulldogs have four games left in the regular season.
-TSN

No big surprise here, thankfully, he didn't pull a Jack Johnson.

And, oh, if you're wondrin' how much he'll be putting in his wallet, it's going to be around $650-750 thousand.

The plan is for Price to get some playing time down in Hamilton, likely so he can know what it's like since he'll almost certainly be playing there next year, and, to keep Jaroslav Halak on the Canadiens' roster.

Yann Danis has played well enough to salvage the no. 1 job with Halak up in Montreal.

Phillipe Sauve and Cedric Desjardins each backed up Yann Danis, but none received any significant playing time.

Sauve, a former Avalanche turned Flame traded to Phoenix, was acquired from the Boston Bruins in a "loan" deal, which sent enforcer Aaron Downey to the Bruins' minor league affiliate.

Carey Price's spectacular international play has Habs fans drooling, however, all you guys can forget about him being here next season or the season after (yup, you too Jacques Demers), he is expected to be the Canadiens starting goaltender come the 2009 Centennial Anniversary season of the Montreal Canadiens which will include plenty of interesting suprises: the all-star game, the draft, the world juniors, a Habs movie and likely Carey Price and our Russian friends Alexei Emelin and Pavel Valentenko.

The Habs are set for a bright future.

-There's also speculation that Bob Gainey will step down as GM of my dear Canadiens, there is no source to prove this, but it's going around on the airwaves...