Canadiens goalie Carey Price makes a save against Arizona’s Ryan White on Thursday.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
Much has happened in the past 331 days, major sports trophies have been lifted, Olympics held, Trump nation has risen, Montreal Canadiens goalie Carey Price became a dad for the first time.
One conspicuous non-occurrence: Price starting an NHL game.
Thus, there has been a lot of pent-up demand for Price's services.
The Bell Centre cheered when he emerged for the pregame warmup – first order of business was a long chat with his cousin, Phoenix Coyotes captain Shane Doan – and they got louder when he was announced as the evening's starting netminder.
Price said this week he was anxious "to see some rubber," but other than the usual peppering in warmup it took a while for his wish to be granted.
Nearly seven minutes in fact.
The detail-oriented fan will note that Price's first save of the 2016-17 season came from an Oliver Ekman-Larsson wrist shot that caught him in the chest.
The crowd had all the reason it needed for the season's first chorus of "Ca-rey, Ca-rey."
The first Carey Price-style save came about a minute later when he casually flashed out his right pad to get a toe on Radim Vrbata's shot from a two-on-one break.
There were also moments of rust, such as an inoffensive Tobias Rieder shot that was kicked directly toward trouble – the high slot – rather than away from it.
In the second period, rookie Mikhail Sergachev gave away the puck near the Montreal net. Price made a sprawling save to deny Phoenix's Jordan Martinook, but found himself on his belly looking the wrong way when Coyotes defenceman Jakob Chychrun got one over on his fellow teenager Sergachev by firing into the top corner.
Later, Price thwarted Doan on a partial break. More cheers of "Ca-rey." He would eventually yield again after Nathan Beaulieu turned the puck over and the Yotes' Laurent Dauphin depositing a rebound behind him.
But by then the Habs were four goals to the good. They won 5-2.
Montreal is palpably a different team with Price behind it; it's as though the players resolved on Thursday not to let him work too hard.
No one in Montreal needs convincing of Price's importance to the Habs.
Insofar as teams can belong to one individual, the Canadiens are Price's team.
Over the past six years, he has been one of the top two or three goalies in the world; in the past three years he has been peerless. No other regular starter has been able to hold a candle to his .931 save percentage.
When he went down to a knee injury last season, the Habs first became rudderless, then they sank. Quickly.
Few teams can prepare for the loss of a superstar player and though the Habs have taken steps to inoculating themselves against another injury absence for Price, he remains the linchpin.
Fans know it, and so do the players.
Earlier this week, head coach Michel Therrien alluded to the confidence premium the Habs enjoy with Price in the game, and his importance as a puck-handler.
It's to take nothing away from Habs backup goalie Al Montoya, the main Price insurance policy, who compiled a 2-0-1 record to start the season and was stellar in shutting out the defending champion Pittsburgh Penguins earlier this week.
Goalies don't usually expect to lose the crease after posting a goose egg, but Montoya knows what he signed up for when he joined as a free agent in the summer.
Therrien said, "if Carey's ready, he's playing, it's pretty simple."
Though Price looked to be his normal self in the recent World Cup of Hockey, a nasty bout of flu set him back. It cost him seven or eight pounds in a week – he has been looking notably sallow of late – and saw him consigned to quarantine in the basement, as Price and wife Angela have a newborn in the house.
"Luckily the baseball playoffs were on," he smiled.