Hot News: Montreal Canadiens unable to rally without Carey Price in Game 2 loss to New ...

MONTREAL - Carey Price stood drained in front of his TD Garden stall last Wednesday in Boston and considered, with his usual is-it-bedtime-yet expression, that his team was heading into the third round of the NHL playoffs for the second time in his seven-season career. Rangers 3 Canadiens 1

Martin St. Louis scored in the second period and Henrik Lundqvist made 40 saves as the New York Rangers made it two in a row at the Bell Centre with a 3-1 victory over the Carey Price-less Montreal Canadiens on Monday night.

The Rangers lead the best-of-seven Eastern Conference final 2-0 heading back to New York for Game 3 on Thursday and Game 4 on Sunday.

St. Louis scored a day after he and his teammates attended the funeral of his mother, who died suddenly just before Mother's Day. The Rangers have rallied around the grieving veteran and have won five in a row since her death.

New York's Rick Nash also scored while Ryan McDonagh added a goal and an assist to give the defenceman six points in the opening two games of the series.

Max Pacioretty scored for Montreal, which outshot New York 41-30.

The Canadiens had a shaky Dustin Tokarski playing his first career NHL playoff game in goal in place of Price, the Olympic gold medallist who hurt his right knee in the series opener when he was crashed into by Chris Kreider. Bill Beacon, The Canadian Press

'I am ecstatic [even if] I don't show it a lot,' the Canadiens goaltender said, his joy more thrilling in type than how it sounded in the sleepy tone of his voice.

'But at the same time, you have to realize that it's not over. We're only halfway there.'

Less than half a game later, Saturday afternoon at the Bell Centre, it's possible that Price's season came to a devastating end when he was crushed by New York Rangers forward Chris Kreider in a violent, high-speed goal-mouth collision.

Now, the Canadiens are facing their toughest challenge this postseason, down 2-0 to the Rangers in this best-of-seven Eastern Conference final after their 3-1 loss Monday.

And if they somehow crawl out of this deep hole, they'll do so without Price, the man who in colossal part got them this far.

Price finished Saturday's second period, having gingerly gotten to his feet after being pasted. He passed the on-ice right-knee inspection of head athletic therapist Graham Rynbend.

But he sat out the third, yielding the net to backup Peter Budaj, skated just a few minutes in advance of Sunday's practice before leaving Brossard ice, then didn't participate in Monday morning's skate before Game 2 of the Eastern Conference final.

Not long afterward, head coach Michel Therrien detonated the thermonuclear device in his media briefing, saying that Price would not be available for Game 2, or for this entire second round.

The sound of oxygen dropping like a cinderblock out of the lungs of an entire city, and a huge fan base far beyond, is a remarkable thing to hear.

One of those sledgehammered Saturday was Canadiens owner, president and CEO Geoff Molson, watching from his Bell Centre loge.

'Your heart stops beating for a second,' Molson said Monday, chatting in his office for a half-hour before Game 2. 'You see Carey get up and you're relieved. But still, as an owner, I immediately asked Marc [Bergevin, the GM] to fill me in with details as he had them.

'Obviously, we didn't have them [Saturday] night. Carey had to spend the night resting to see where he stood the next day. He's our best player and he's the reason we're in the third round right now. It's really a big disappointment to lose him.

'But we have a team full of character,' Molson added. 'I believe in everyone in the organization. I think they're capable of overcoming this.'

Molson had sent Price a text message earlier in the day and got a reply 'that he's going to do everything possible to get back as soon as possible. He's a winner.'

Molson is quite right when he says the Canadiens are here against the Rangers in large part because of Price, whose brilliant play on many nights this season and post-season gave his teammates an uncommon faith in themselves, a belief that kept the Habs in the hunt to win games the club had no business winning.

Price was excellent in Montreal's quarter-final sweep of Tampa Bay, then upped his game yet another level in the seven-game, come-from-behind semi-final upset of the Boston Bruins.

It would be on the back of Price, versus the superb Henrik Lundqvist in the Rangers net, that the Canadiens would make a push for the team's first Stanley Cup final berth since 1993 - when they won their 24th championship.

The Canadiens are far from out, but their path to the final has just become strewn with boulders worthy of the surface of the moon. With Price sidelined, the netminding now is in the hands of Budaj and rookie Dustin Tokarski, who between them going into Game 2 had appeared in seven career playoff games, all of them by Budaj.

It was the gambler Therrien who rolled Monday's dice with Tokarski, whose 2 2/3 games for the Canadiens this season had come on the road.

After the emotional to-the-limit series against Boston, Canadiens fans and perhaps the team itself wondered about the degree of intensity a series against the Rangers could generate.

That also was the thought last season, when the Canadiens met the dry-white-toast Ottawa Senators in the first round. But a thunderous open-ice check of Lars Eller by Ottawa's Eric Gryba in Game 1 changed that in a hurry. Eller was stretchered off and the blood between the team became bad.

Then on Saturday, in one goalie-splattering collision, the Rangers' Kreider replaced Bruins captain Zdeno Chara at least temporarily as the most detested opponent on Montreal ice.

It was 11 months ago that Price stood before his Brossard dressing-room stall and spoke of his Canadiens' past, present and future, having been unable to play his team's fifth and final Eastern quarter-final game against Ottawa.

Price had suffered a second-degree sprain of his left medial collateral ligament in Game 4, six-plus weeks of rehab and healing sending him into summer.

He returned in September to a new goaltending coach, Stéphane Waite, and a new approach to playing his position, each game packaged into a sharply focused routine; no looking games ahead, no looking back beyond a little video review to tweak his mechanics.

And then Price was bulldozed by Kreider, who is famous/infamous for his hard, net-driving style that through his own fault, or not, has claimed a handful of goalies.

The debate about the incident will only heat up, especially with the Canadiens now needing to win at least two of three scheduled games at Madison Square Garden.

Geoff Molson wasn't sitting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper Monday night, or with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, these two very different rulers guests in his house. He was in his loge with his wife, Kate, and 'my lucky charms this year, the family of Marc Bergevin.'

Molson, his companions, the bulging arena and a Canadiens fan base that knows no borders were sparing more than one thought for injured goalie Price, who drove the Habs bus to where it parked for Game 2.

'Carey's done a lot for us,' Molson said. 'Now it's time for us to do something for him.'

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