With Carey Price Back, There's Reason for Hope Again in Montreal

This is part of VICE Sports' 2016 NHL preview coverage. You can read all our stories here.

Usually when a team is coming off a disastrous season in which it missed the playoffs by a mile, expectations are tempered, but that isn't really the case for the 2016-17 edition of the Montreal Canadiens. With the nature of last season's struggles being mostly due to injuries—specifically Carey Price missing all but 12 games—expectations were already going to be high, anyway. Add to that the trade of P.K. Subban for an older defenceman in Shea Weber, and the Canadiens are clearly in 'win now' mode.

The Canadiens' roster isn't quite finalized, with the main question being whether 2016 first-round pick Mikhail Sergachev will make the team, but we have a general idea of what the club will look like.

Out are Subban, Lars Eller, Dale Weise, Tomas Fleischmann, and Devante Smith-Pelly. In are Weber, Andrew Shaw, Alexander Radulov, likely Artturi Lehkonen and Zach Redmond, and maybe Sergachev.

Without getting into the Subban-for-Weber trade again, the players the Canadiens brought in should overall be superior to those they let go. But this doesn't account for the return of Price, which is the biggest factor in the Canadiens' success going forward.

The Canadiens also upgraded their backup goaltending situation with Al Montoya, and that position should once again be a major strength of the club's. The Canadiens no doubt felt the shock of goaltending going from their greatest strength to their biggest weakness last season, with Price's .933 save percentage of 2014-15 replaced by Mike Condon's .903, a drop no team could plan for. But Price is back now, and if his .957 save percentage at the World Cup of Hockey is any indication, he hasn't missed a beat.

If the Canadiens were to average the same number of shots against per game as last year, where they ranked 12th, how big of an improvement could they see from goaltending, working on the premise that Price suited up for 60 games and Montoya 22? Let's use each goaltender's three-year average save percentage to project it.

Montreal allowed 233 goals against last season, the 10th most in the NHL, and theoretically that number would drop to 179, which is pretty obscene, even better than Price's Hart Trophy year in 2014-15. Even if the Canadiens don't improve offensively at all, that would bring them from a -18 goal differential team last season to +36, around fourth best in the NHL.

Of course, there's no guarantee that either goaltender plays that well, or that the Canadiens maintain their improved possession game of last season, which sort of flew under the radar amid the cascade of losses once Price went down.

Montreal has struggled to stay above water in possession for prolonged periods for most of Michel Therrien's current tenure as head coach, yet last season it maintained a relatively high level of play before the team sort of gave up over the last quarter of the season.

Many focused on possible changes to Therrien's system to explain how this was happening, but the reality was a bit more simple—the addition of Jeff Petry created a legitimate second pairing on defence that the Canadiens didn't have before, and unlike previous years, the team wasn't carrying possession anchors as depth players. In 2014-15, Manny Malhotra was absolutely brutal in that regard, tanking the fourth line all season, and in 2013-14, Douglas Murray and Francis Bouillon continually tanked the third pairing on defence.

The Canadiens' depth is further improved this season with the biggest difference maker being Radulov, a serious scoring threat who enables Montreal to build a second scoring line, something it has struggled to do for the last several seasons. All that suggests that the Canadiens could be a legitimate threat next season. There is, however, a problem, or a few of them.

For starters, the trade of Subban for Weber does represent a huge downgrade in terms of driving both possession and goals. The improved depth may offset that, but a downgrade that severe may make many of the legitimate upgrades less visible. Don't get me wrong, it's essentially not possible for the Canadiens to struggle as much as last season, but once again the only chance they have to be great is Price.

Unfortunately for the Habs, that's a bit of a problem, because after four years of incremental progress under Marc Bergevin, they have just two more seasons of Price at below market value. The Canadiens were on the clock, anyway, but making an unpopular move of the magnitude Bergevin did this summer puts extra pressure on the franchise to do more than simply make the playoffs—the stated goal for the last four seasons.

Unless disaster strikes, this team is definitely good enough to make the postseason—it may even find legitimate regular-season success. But there is a new kind of pressure on the Canadiens that hasn't existed before for this group, and that's what makes this season so interesting for the Habs. They do have the makings of a competitive team—even if the way their defense is put together suggests that struggles are on the way—but ultimately may fall short of being a Stanley Cup contender.

The pressure on the Canadiens is going to be immense, especially on captain Max Pacioretty, who had an "off" year last season with "just" 30 goals, and spent the last month being called out by Team USA's John Tortorella, then defended himself against a rumour that his coach may have called him the worst captain in team history off the record.

The kind of tabloid scrutiny that surrounded the captain in September was the sort of thing that stuck to Subban like a magnet while in Montreal, but he was uniquely capable of being unfairly criticized and having it roll off his back. Pacioretty has struggled a bit more with criticism of his game, and a more intense scrutiny could have a negative impact.

The Canadiens sent a clear message this summer that now is the time for this core to compete for a Stanley Cup. It's time we find out what they're made of.