MONTREAL — Cayden Primeau is not exactly an extrovert, by his own admission, so the situation he found himself in Tuesday night at Bell Centre did not come naturally to him.
And yet, he nailed it.
Being named first star after a Montreal Canadiens home game is a special experience, but it’s not for everyone. As your name is called, you sign three pucks to throw into the crowd before going to centre ice to do a live interview in front of the remaining crowd, a crowd that in this instance had been chanting Primeau’s name as he closed out his second straight shutout on home ice.
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Primeau threw his first puck into a crowd of people, but for his second puck, he quickly identified a young fan trying to get his attention. Primeau lightly lobbed that puck right into the hands of that child, who went sprinting up the steps, happy as can be.
As he arrived at centre ice to be interviewed by RDS analyst Marc Denis, he finally removed his goalie mask and rested it on his head, giving the fans chanting his name a chance to take a look at his face. When he told them how “unbelievable” it was to hear them chanting his name, they started doing it again. His answers to questions were brief. He was nervous. This was not his natural habitat.
“I try to stay in shadows and not be too out there,” Primeau said afterward. “But just the support means so much, so it’s cool to do that.”
But it was Primeau’s final answer, as brief as it was like so many others he ge, that showed his readiness for a stage like this and said so much about how his belief in himself has grown, how long he has waited for this opportunity and how prepared he feels for it to start in earnest now.
When Denis asked him about the end of the Canadiens’ season-long three-goalie rotation after Jake Allen was traded away Friday, with this 41-se, 3-0 shutout victory against the Columbus Blue Jackets being Primeau’s first start since that trade, since getting the assurance from the organization that it will move forward with him, that brief answer said everything that needed to be said in three words.
“Just the beginning,” he said, before skating off the ice to more applause.
Ce n'est que le début
Just the beginning #GoHabsGo pic.twitter.com/aJWou4zPZn
— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) March 13, 2024
That, friends, is a rather perfect mic drop for someone outside his natural habitat.
As Primeau spoke to reporters in the dressing room after the win, one he said was in no way a statement despite the impeccable timing of it coming after the organization had cleared the road of the NHL veteran standing in his way, he fidgeted with the Velcro of his mesh laundry bag, constantly opening and closing it as he spoke, with that noise a constant background to his words.
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“I like to listen more than I like to talk,” Primeau said. “I wouldn’t say I’m shy, but (there’s) definitely some shell that you need to crack to get to the real me.”
Canadiens fans are about to get a shot at cracking that shell because we should be hearing from Primeau much more often now that he will be playing regularly. But really, his play has done a lot of talking for him this season already, just as it did Tuesday.
There are two specific areas Primeau feels he has improved the most. The first is his physical strength, which he put a lot of emphasis on in the offseason. And the second is his mental strength, which he has emphasized since last season when he began working with a mental coach.
But both those things are allowing Primeau to properly exploit what he feels is his biggest strength, which is reading the play. In the past, he was often scrambling to get in position when things got a bit chaotic in front of him, which suggested maybe he wasn’t reading the play all that well. But he feels his improved strength is allowing him to execute his reads more often, and his mental strength has allowed him to properly channel his energy and changed the way he saw the game and his perspective on things.
Essentially, those improvements he allowed his body to better follow what his brain was processing all along.
“I definitely feel big right now,” Primeau said. “I think that’s my biggest asset, is being able to read the play, and now that I’m stronger and did a few things technically, I feel as though I’m beating the passes and getting there early, which allows me to tap into reading the play, which is why I feel that I’m successful.”
Primeau’s journey this season has been challenging, but it’s been beneficial. And Canadiens goaltending coach Éric Raymond is a big reason. Those technical adjustments Primeau is talking about come largely from him, and hing three goalies to work with meant Raymond had to figure out those technical adjustments for 50 percent more goalies than he would normally. At last check, Raymond did not get a 50 percent raise for his trouble, so the extra work he’s done with Primeau has not gone unnoticed.
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“I don’t take that lightly,” Primeau said. “Sometimes I’ve been out there for two hours and he’s right there with me. We go out early, we do the practice, we go to the other side (the second sheet of ice at the Canadiens’ practice facility), and then we stay after (practice). We do video, we do a bunch of stuff, so he’s put in a lot of hours. Just grateful for someone who is so helpful but also loves the game. He’s been great this year.”
Primeau’s teammates he admired his attitude all season, as he Allen and Sam Montembeault. He’s put in the work with Raymond, he’s been ready when called upon, and now he has this runway to show all the work was worth it for the Canadiens.
“He’s taken the next step in his game, and you can see that,” defenceman Kaiden Guhle said. “He’s huge in the net, he’s making a ton of ses for us, and he’s more confident in there, I feel like. It’s fun to watch. You could always tell over the years that he was a good goalie and had all the tools. For him to take the step he took this year is really fun to see.”
There is a lot of road left for Primeau to trel. But even though he downplayed it, even though he insisted this was just another game and that he approached it with the same intensity and purpose as he had every other game he’s started this season, the reality is it was more than that.
Had Primeau faltered under a bombardment from the Blue Jackets — with many of those shots coming from the perimeter but still requiring him to stop them — especially after being spotted a very early 3-0 lead by his teammates, the significance of it would he been heightened by the circumstances. It would he been perceived as evidence the Canadiens might he made a mistake trading Allen away when they did.
The opposite is naturally true, but Primeau’s insistence that neither scenario had much bearing on his approach to the game is proof the work he’s done with his mental coach is bearing significant fruit. According to Evolving Hockey, the Blue Jackets earned 4.66 expected goals in all situations Tuesday, and Natural Stat Trick had it as 5.01 expected goals. They got no actual goals.
Just the beginning, Primeau told the Bell Centre crowd. The Canadiens can only hope so because this was one hell of a start.
(Photo of Cayden Primeau and Juraj Slafkovský: Arianne Bergeron / NHLI via Getty Images)