Carey Price sends Jacob Fowler and Jakub Dobes a warning shortly after announcing his hockey comeback

In Montreal, though, it's closer to an advance on a bill that eventually comes due.

Price spent fifteen years at the Bell Centre watching people mistake his serene posture for a lack of passion.

Price also recently announced that he has made a comeback to the game, playing as a forward in a beer league.

Whenever his former Canadiens team slumped, his stillness wasn't viewed as poise, it was weaponized as evidence that he didn't care enough.

Now, he's handed that exact same label to a 21-year-old who hasn't even negotiated his second NHL contract yet.

Jakub Dobes doesn't have that problem. Dobes plays with a visible, chaotic energy.

When he gives up a bad goal, he slams his stick or digs his skates in, and the crowd sees a guy fighting for his life.

When Fowler gives up the same goal and barely blinks, the market is left to fill that silence. In Quebec, silence usually gets filled with skepticism.

That psychological split is what will actually decide this crease when the games get heavy.

Right now, the Canadiens have a tandem with Dobes and Fowler splitting workload, coming off a surprisingly deep run to the Eastern Conference Final after a 48-24-10 season.

The stat sheets might show nearly identical numbers, but numbers don't settle a Montreal goaltending controversy.

Martin St. Louis coaches on feel.

When the pressure spikes in April, the tiebreaker won't be goal-against averages or high-danger save percentages, it will be body language and trust.

Price likely knows this better than anyone on earth. He won a Hart, a Vezina, and 361 games here, yet still spent half his career defending his own pulse rate to the media.

By publicly tagging Fowler with that same "quiet" label now, Price isn't just offering praise. He's handing the kid a map for the exact storm heading his way.

Fowler has the talent to be the guy, but learning how to let a passionate fan base misinterpret his calm might end up being his hardest save.

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Carey Price is eight pounds lighter, and one training change says everything about a comeback