Behind the Story

The Carey Price Feature: "The Loneliest Man In Sports"

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Price in his old-school pads.

Carey Price is staring at his legs and chest as if they belong to someone else, and indeed, the equipment he wears is not his. He's standing in the Bell Sports Complex staring at replicas of pads worn by Montreal Canadiens Hall-of-Famer and six-time Stanley Cup winner Jacques Plante in the 1950s. During games Price may wear his own unflashy, brown-leather pads in homage to all things old-school, but this, his first touch-and-feel session with goaltending history, is giving him a new appreciation for the masked men that went before him. Both the chest protector and leg pads he wears today are smaller than those worn by today's baseball catchers. Plante was the same goalie that, to the chagrin of legendary Habs' coach Toe Blake, wore a mask in a game. Price stares in disbelief at the fiberglass replica of that mask, small and fragile-looking in his massive hand.

"If my equipment looked like this," he says, "I never would have been a goalie."

Two days later, Price arrives at the Canadiens' practice rink on Montreal's South Shore in his Ford Harley Davidson pick-up truck during a raging snowstorm. He is dressed in full cowboy regalia, complete with hat, chaps, boots and lasso, for yet another photo shoot. Price wore the outfit with ease; as a kid, he participated in team roping events at rodeos in British Columbia, an event in which two riders on horseback work together to rope a steer.

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The original gangsta, Jacques Plante.

These are a few of the images I remember of Price from my trip to Montreal where I followed him around for a week for this cover story. What I didn't see was Price actually playing a game.

I have seen him between the pipes before. Most recently duing last season's playoffs. But Price was fatigued at the end of Montreal's postseason run. In fact, in an uncharacteristically mature move for a 21-year-old, he took it upon himself to shed 28 pounds from his 6-4 frame. "It's not that he was out of shape. He was overweight," says Montreal D-Man Mike Komisarek. "But when he came to camp this year he was swimming in his suits. He looked like a totally different person." And a different goalie. Dropping weight increased Price's already stellar quickness and agility, and I was eager to see the improvements in person.

But this year, I wouldn't get my wish. My first night in Montreal, Habs' backup Jaroslav Halak started against the Flames. Price had played four in a row, and it was a regularly scheduled breather. Two days later against the Lightning, Price went down with the flu. And two days after that, he missed another against Washington with a "lower-body injury," which nowadays is as descriptive as the NHL requires teams to be. Halak would start three more games while Price was on the mend, and I would leave Montreal without seeing the subject of my story play a single minute. I tried again two weeks later in New York, but Price would miss that trip with another lower-body injury.

This kind of bad luck is a reporter's nightmare, but there's a way around everything. Thank God for exceptionally descriptive goaltending coaches, and for the NHL Center Ice package.

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