One of these days, the Canadiens will be burned by it.

But as long as Carey Price continues this breakout season of his, it may be some time before it actually happens.

With a 2-0 first period lead against a Vancouver Canucks team sitting atop the league standings and welcoming back two key defencemen to the lineup, the Canadiens fell into a familiar pattern of allowing their opponents to wrest control of a game out of their hands.

Against the highest scoring team in the NHL, it's not necessarily a strong course of action.

The shots on goal were 10-1 for the visitors when Brian Gionta followed up David Desharnais' nifty breakaway goal by cashing in a rebound only 67 seconds later to give Montreal a 2-0 lead. The advantage climbed to 14-1 for the Canadiens before Vancouver managed it's second shot on goal, drawing derisive cheers from their own fans.

Well, the shots on goal finished 39-25 for the Canucks.

For those among you whose arithmetic is a little rusty, that makes for a 38-11 shot disparity in favour of Vancouver over the final 50 minutes of the game.

But Price stopped every single one he could actually see, and probably stopped a few that he couldn't.

If it weren't for Ryan Kesler being a constant – and I mean constant – presence in front of him on the power play and otherwise, I'm not sure Price would have given up a single goal on this night.

And so Price gets his first victory in his home province, one that ends a troubling Canadiens slide – albeit temporarily – and one that hopefully erases the memories of his two previous trips home that each ended in Canucks blowouts.

The last time the Canadiens shocked the world by shutting out the Canucks 2-0 on home ice on Nov. 9, it put an end to a far less troubling string of three losses in four games and began a four-game winning streak that led to them winning 10 of their next 14 games.

It was Price's second shutout of the season, a 34-save gem that probably marked the last time anyone questioned whether or not he would be up to the challenge of being the team's No. 1 goalie once more.

It's sometimes easy to forget what a massive question mark Price represented coming into the season, seeing as his performances have rarely been less than solid, and often times have lofted up into spectacular territory.

To get an idea of just how good Price has been, the Canadiens scored three goals for the first time in four games, and improved their record when they do so to 25-2-5 on the season. I'm sure a lot of teams in the NHL have similarly gaudy statistics when scoring three goals or more in a game, but to have lost only twice in regulation in 32 such occasions speaks to the goaltending this team is getting.

Subban more shutdown than flash

But that stat also speaks to the defence, and it was intriguing – if not baffling – to watch the Canadiens use PK Subban so sparingly on the power play in this game.

Of their six minutes of power play time, Subban played less than a third of it – 1:47 to be exact.

Meanwhile, Roman Hamrlik led all Canadiens players with 4:30 of power play time. It was bizarro world.

Subban was relegated to the second wave of the power play alongside Yannick Weber largely because his even strength ice time against the Sedin twins and his penalty killing work was deemed far more valuable in a game the Canadiens never trailed.

Whenever the Canadiens were able to do it, Subban and Hal Gill were sent out against the Sedins or Kesler's line.

The Canucks failed to score at even strength, which says a lot about Price, but also about that defence pairing.

In terms of penalty killing, Subban and Gill spent 6:53 of the Canadiens 9:32 of shorthanded time on the ice. Out of all that ice time, only Mikael Samuelsson's long slapper through a Kesler screen went in.

Who in their right minds would have thought Subban would be held off the power play so he could save his energy for the penalty kill back in December, when the whole city was up in arms because he sat out three games?

The same way it's easy to forget what the pre-season concerns were with Price, it's just as easy to forget what they were with Subban as well. Except I have no excuse, considering I wrote this story about him in the pre-season describing the challenge he had in proving he could play in his own end.

Subban has erased that question mark just as emphatically as Price has.