MONTREAL—Through the first eight games of their season, the Montreal Canadiens didn’t need exceptional goaltending to collect seven wins.

In Game 9, Carey Price, who rocked a .947 save percentage in his first four starts, was forced by the visiting Toronto Maple Leafs to be at his very best.

He did not disappoint in Montreal’s 2-1 win Saturday.

“Carey was outstanding tonight,” said Canadiens coach Michel Therrien. “A lot of credit goes to the Leafs. They played a really good game. This is a good, young team with a lot of speed.”

No kidding.

The Leafs did everything they could on this night to snap a 10-game losing streak to their oldest rivals.

They out-shot the Canadiens 38-31, out-chanced them handily, and with the exception of a perfect play finished by forward Nazem Kadri in the fifth minute of the third period, there was no solving Price.

The show started early.

Toronto’s first scoring chance of the game was a cross-ice passing play that would’ve had any goaltender stretching to make the save. But Price was so well-positioned he nearly overplayed Zack Hyman’s shot before casually bumping it to the corner of the rink.

A few moments later, Toronto’s Tyler Bozak tested Price from the slot and the rebound gave Connor Carrick a great look at what would have been his second goal of the season.

Carrick appeared to be in disbelief when he was denied by Price’s right pad.

The brilliance of Price is in his ability to make hard saves appear routine; to make seemingly impossible ones look as if they’re easy — just like he did in pushing away a one-timer from talented Leafs rookie Mitch Marner five minutes into the second period.

Toronto’s William Nylander came barreling down the ice on a breakaway at the halfway mark of the second period, and the right-hander slid the puck from forehand to backhand before shooting back across his body. Price, who was moving to his right, stopped himself and lifted his glove up to deflect the puck away. It was spectacular.

A string of reporters laughed in reaction up on press row.

Apparently some of Price’s teammates got a kick out of his save on Nylander, too.

“He makes it look so easy it’s ridiculous,” said Canadiens centre Torrey Mitchell. “We almost chuckle on the bench at times. Same as you guys. You’re watching the same thing we’re watching and we’re just, ‘Look at how easy that looked.’”

Price did, however, get more than just a laugh out of his bench with a windmill glove save on Marner less than two minutes before defenceman Shea Weber scored his fourth goal of the season to put Montreal up 2-1. Weber said Price’s show-stopping save gave the Canadiens all the momentum they needed.

He might be new to the team, but perhaps no one knows Price better than Weber does.

The two spend their summers training together in Kelowna, B.C., they’ve won Olympic Gold and the World Cup of Hockey together as members of Team Canada, and they’ve been friends going back to their respective junior careers in the Western Hockey League.

Does Price still surprise the big defenceman?

“Nope,” Weber said with a chuckle. “I think I’ve seen it all. He’s one of those guys who’s so positionally sound, so smart, and he reads the game so well he makes it look easy.”

There’s that word again: “easy.”

But life for Price over the last year has been anything but easy. He missed 70 games—the bulk of them with a sprained MCL — last season.

Price said the biggest challenge he faced was trying to regain his timing ahead of the World Cup, lest he be embarrassed on the world’s biggest stage in Toronto.

“When you miss a lot of games, everything seems so fast and you feel like you need to be faster,” Price said. “So you kinda like, I wouldn’t say panic, but you almost feel like you’re trying to catch up, and I think after a couple of games [at the World Cup] I realized the game speed and got back into the rhythm of things.”

Now Price looks just like the guy who went 5-0 and had a .972 save percentage at the 2014 Olympics; just like the guy who earned his first Hart and Vezina Trophies and the Ted Lindsay award after going 44-16-6 with a .933 save percentage for the Canadiens in 2014-15; just like the guy who was 10-2-0 last season before the injury bug hit.

So far, Price is 5-0-0 with a .954 save percentage and a 1.40 goals against average.

Here’s a scary thought: he thinks he can be better.

“I’m feeling pretty good, not content by any means,” he said. “That’s the key to long-term success is realizing there’s a lot more work ahead.”