Carey Price, centre, hasn’t been derailed by last season’s lengthy injury, nor by the illness he started this season with. Even still, he says he’s not content with his current form and sees room for improvement.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
The Canadiens jersey, spotted among post-victory revellers in a downtown Montreal boîte this weekend, bore the number 25 and the nameplate "BELIEVE".
If you can't have faith as a hockey fan, why even bother?
A city thirsts, as it has for 24 autumns now, for the lineup that can lift a 25th Stanley Cup.
There have been false dawns. Quick starts are a thing the Habs do under Michel Therrien (the team has a .738 winning percentage in the first 30 days of the season the past four years).
After racking up a sparkling 8-0-1 record in the season's first nine games, the question is: Are these guys for real?
One is tempted to answer that question with: It sure looks like it.
There are caveats, of course.
Montreal has won a couple of recent games against Tampa Bay and Toronto it just as easily could have lost.
The Leafs remain a work in progress, which is the province of young teams, but on Saturday they pushed the top team in the NHL standings hard and would have won had anyone other than Carey Price been in the home net.
Shooting percentages tend to revert to the mean and the goalies won't stop 95.4 per cent of opposing shots all year, but there is a sense this is a more solid edifice than last year's, which was reduced to rubble when goalie Price hurt his leg.
On Saturday night, the Habs won their seventh successive game – the fifth occasion they had played in eight nights – beating the Maple Leafs for the 11th consecutive time.
They lead the league with 17 out of a possible 18 points; they have conceded an NHL-low 13 goals, their power-play – missing and presumed dead last year – has scored in seven of the past eight games.
Defenceman Shea Weber is off to the best start of his career, but as great as he has been, much of this team's success is, now and forever, about Price.
The 29-year-old's lengthy injury layoff and subsequent illness to start the season have done nothing to derail his imperious form since the 2014 Sochi Olympics. He is 68-16-6 since then, while putting up Dominik Hasek-like save percentage numbers (he has repelled more than 93 per cent of the shots directed his way in the past three years).
"He makes it look easy … how calm he is back there. He knows where the puck is and where it's going to be from the shot or the pass," defenceman Jeff Petry said.
Leafs forward William Nylander, who was frustrated on a breakaway Saturday by Price's glove, learned it first-hand on Saturday.
"He just lets the puck hit him," the 20-year-old said. "It can get frustrating a little bit."
Yeah, there's a lot of that going around.
Saturday was a landmark game on a couple of fronts – Leafs super-rookie Auston Matthews recorded his first official NHL hit, on defenceman Alexei Emelin, and Price made it a full calendar year since his last loss.
Sure, he's only started a handful of NHL games since then, but consider that after Saturday's 37-save effort Price said of his current form: "I'm not content by any means. I think that's the key to long-term success – realizing there's more work ahead."
If the Habs are a point off their franchise-record pace after nine games last year, it feels like an appreciably better team.
The key difference with the recent past is maybe, at long last, the supporting cast has succeeded in narrowing the quality gap with the team's best player.
The most obvious difference is Al Montoya's form as a backup goalie.
The Weber for P.K. Subban trade will start arguments for at least the next decade, but through the first three weeks of the season, Weber has been a clear upgrade in the goal department – he already has three game-winners.
A surface assessment might point to Weber's play as a central factor, but his scoring and underlying stats are essentially identical to Subban's during last year's first month, as are the team's counting stats.
Perhaps more significant have been the contributions of Alexander Radulov, acquired via free agency, and recently promoted to the top line alongside Alex Galchenyuk (eight points in nine games) and Brendan Gallagher.
His ability to protect the puck and his defensive awareness – Weber pointed out Radulov is a fight-to-the-death kind of player – far outshine anything the departed Alex Semin brought to the table. Or, for that matter, the other top-six forward options of previous years such as Pierre-Alexandre Parenteau and Daniel Brière, let alone stop-gaps such as Dale Weise or Tomas Fleischmann (last fall's 'it' boy).
Overlooked and underappreciated in the early going, Petry's strong play has stabilized the second defensive pairing. Even Emelin, so often overmatched and gaffe-prone in recent years, is logging heavy minutes alongside Weber.
Tomas Plekanec's checking has bedevilled top opposing centres – Matthews recorded no points on Saturday – and fourth-liners Torrey Mitchell and Phillip Danault suddenly look like elite role players.
Associate coach Kirk Muller's input on special teams has paid immediate dividends.
The sample size remains small to draw definitive conclusions about Montreal, but it is growing.
The Habs have been lucky, but disentangling the Price effect from their performances reveals they've also been very, very good.