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Under pressure: Carey Price

Winnipeg Jets v Montreal Canadiens

MONTREAL, QC - APRIL 03: Goaltender Carey Price #31 of the Montreal Canadiens protects his net against the Winnipeg Jets during the NHL game at the Bell Centre on April 3, 2018 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Winnipeg Jets defeated the Montreal Canadiens 5-4 in overtime. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)

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Each day in the month of August we’ll be examining a different NHL team — from looking back at last season to discussing a player under pressure to focusing on a player coming off a breakthrough year to asking questions about the future. Today we look at the Montreal Canadiens.

If the Montreal Canadiens are going to have any chance of being anything resembling a competitive team this season they are going to need a massive year from starting goaltender Carey Price.

Probably not just a good year. Probably not even a great year. But probably the type of season he had a couple of years ago when he won the Vezina and Hart Trophies and pretty much single handedly carried the team to the playoffs.

In other words: The Canadiens are going to maybe need an all-time great year from their goalie to have a chance to compete.

For the better part of the past five seasons the Canadiens’ success or failure has largely ridden on whether or not Price is healthy and on top of his game. When he has not been one or the other, they have been a colossal disaster. As unfair as it is to put that much on one player -- and it’s terribly unfair, and even totally unreasonable -- that alone is enough reason for Price to be facing some pressure this season.

It is not the only reason.
[Canadiens Day: Looking back | Breakthrough | Three Questions]

Not only is he the most important and impactful player on the roster, and the one player that might be capable of turning them into something even remotely interesting, he is also coming off of what was perhaps his worst season in the NHL and is in need of a bounce back year. Not only for the short-term, but also because Price is entering the first year of an eight-year contract that is going to carry a salary cap hit of $10.5 million per season through the end of the 2025-26 season. That is an absolutely enormous investment for a goalie. It is $2 million more per season than the second highest paid goalie (New York Rangers starter Henrik Lundqvist at $8.5 million), while Price and Lundqvist are the only two goalies in the league to carry a cap hit north of $7.5 million this season.

Combined with defenseman Shea Weber -- who will not be ready for the start of the regular season as he recovers from offseason surgery -- the Canadiens long-term foundation is built around two players on the wrong side of 30 that will account for nearly $19 million in salary cap space through the end of the 2026 season. There is no other team in the league that has a salary cap structure quite like that at the top of its lineup, and the success or failure of the team centered around that duo will largely define general manager Marc Bergevin’s tenure with the franchise.

Given how much of an impact Price can make on the Canadiens he is probably worth every penny of that salary when he is at his best. There are only a handful of players in the NHL that can single-handedly change a team’s success as drastically as Price can, and in recent years we have seen both sides of that impact, from him carrying the team to an Atlantic Division crown in 2014-15, to the way the team self-destructed the following year when he was injured for all but 12 games of the season.

With the way the rest of this roster is looking right now the Canadiens are probably going to need a repeat of 2014-15 from Price.

Anything less than that will probably result in another poor season on the ice.

Another way of looking at it: It probably won’t be Price’s fault if the Canadiens miss the playoffs again, but he is probably their only chance to get back there.

That is pressure.

Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.