Ottawa Senators forward Bobby Ryan (6) reacts with teammates after scoring a goal against the Montreal Canadiens during the first period in game five of the first round of the 2015 Stanley Cup Playoffs at the Bell Centre.Eric Bolte
The goalie's reputation is for calm, unflappability.
After the final horn and a brief, doleful appearance before the media, a forceful, four-letter expletive rang out moments after he disappeared down a hallway.
The coach has cultivated a sunny playoff disposition since losing his cool and the psychological war in the post-season two years ago.
His post-loss news conference was as terse as a particularly nasty cross-examination; it lasted 2:49 and involved a John Tortorella-esque 145 words in response to nine questions.
The heart-and-soul tough guy hasn't has kept his nose clean (zero penalty minutes in four games) and stayed away from the extra-curriculars through four games.
On this night he decided it was a good idea to get into a fencing match with the other team's goalie late in the game, touching off a melee that took his own club's best defenceman off the ice with a misconduct penalty.
The opposing coach spluttered about it being "a cheap, extremely cheap" move and a classic manifestation of frustration.
So yeah, you could say the Montreal Canadiens are frustrated.
There is something about the Ottawa Senators that deeply annoys the Habs.
Maybe it's the fact they just keep coming at them.
Montreal fired more shots, won more faceoffs, controlled the puck more, forced more blocked shots – and lost 5-1.
A 3-0 series lead in an admittedly close match-up, is now 3-2 and narrowing.
Montreal only needs to win one game to end Ottawa's season, but that's been the case since last Sunday.
The challenge is to find the upper hand again by Sunday's game six.
"I think we had opportunities to score goals today, that's the thing that makes it, I don't know if it makes it easier, but we're optimistic, not pessimistic, at this point in time. You look at it, we've had breakaways, we've had point-blank scoring opportunities, a couple of them, I hate to say it but it's a little bit of luck. You just need some luck," said defenceman P.K. Subban. "We're doing some things well, we can't sit here and point the fingers at anybody else because it's not about that, it's about continuing to do the same things. Earlier on in the series, we got the bounces. It's kind of shifted a little bit, but that's not shifting momentum that's just bounces, it's part of the game."
There are no feelings of 'uh-oh, here it comes' in the Montreal room, at least not that anyone is prepared to admit publicly.
But in Craig Anderson they are confronted with a goalie who has now stopped 120 of 123 shots in the three games he's played – for a spiffy .976 save percentage.
"At the end of the day, we're up 3-2. This is a good team we're playing against, nobody said it was going to be easy. They definitely have a lot of heart, they've battled back from the trade deadline and played some of the best hockey in the league," said winger Max Pacioretty. "We were expecting them to play that well and their goalie is playing probably the best I've seen him play. But we can't focus on that, we've got to worry about winning one game and one series. All it takes is one player to steal a game as you saw in that Tampa game (a 3-2 comeback win on Thursday). One line, one player, everyone in here should want to be the difference and hopefully that reflects in their play on Sunday."
Ottawa coach Dave Cameron opined that with each win by his club, "the pressure shifts to Montreal."
If the pressure is building on the likes of Pacioretty, Tomas Plekanec, Brendan Gallagher and Alex Galchenyuk – four of the five top scorers on the team in the regular season, they have a total of six points between them in five games – it must be reaching glacier-like weight on the power-play.
Other teams have survived impotent man-advantages and gone on to win the Stanley Cup, but they've generally picked up a power-play marker at a crucial time here and there.
The Habs are now 1-for-19 in the series, an early too-many-men call on Friday provided an opportunity to get the Bell Centre rocking and the Senators on their heels.
It went begging.
"It is frustrating, you can't stand here and pretend that it's not, it is," said Subban. "It's frustrating when you have power-plays and you can't make the difference there. It's a game of bounces, they score a power-play goal that goes off my stick, that's what you need sometimes, you need a bounce. We're getting pucks to the net, I think we have to do a better job of getting in front of the goaltender so he can't see it and track pucks down."
Perhaps the silver lining is that Ottawa forward Jean-Gabriel Pageau, who has been in Subban's face all series and has blocked at least eight of his power-play point shots, is listed as day-to-day after stopping a third-period blast with his right leg (he played only two more shifts).
"They're only going to get harder," Subban said of the shots Pageau seems all too willing to block. "I wish him the best of luck."
Ottawa forward Clarke MacArthur is also an injury doubt after leaving the game in the second period.
The pressure also seems to be rising on Habs coach Michel Therrien.
When asked about Brandon Prust's double-minor for his spear and slash-fest with Anderson in the third period (Anderson landed the first blow, Subban and Eric Gryba were given misconducts for grappling in the aftermath), and about Cameron's "cheap" comment, he said "I have no comment."
Reporters also asked him about
The pressure was already intense on Price – it's a fact of life playing goal in Montreal – perhaps now it will mount on the men in front of him.
All the talk in Montreal before game five was about crowding Anderson and taking away his sightlines.
This game went sideways on Ottawa's second shot – after a long period of Montreal domination in the first period – at least in part because the Senators did just that to Price.
Bobby Ryan's innocent shot found a path through Price as Mika Zibanejad arrived on the scene.
Patrick Wiercioch's shot found the top corner a few minutes later whenl Pageau and Erik Condra converged on Ottawa's net with their checkers in tow (Greg Pateryn and Tom Gilbert).
Screening goalies is largely about timing; the Sens had it, the Habs did not.
"It seemed like a lot went their way on the first two goals, at least. You've got to give them credit, but the timing was great. The first one's a rush play, the guy's going to net, how often is it that as soon as he takes away his eyes the puck goes right by him and goes through. It's frustrating, that's the way playoffs go, though," Pacioretty said.