Fired Waite: Canadiens Expected Carey Price to Struggle

When you get fired from a job there's two ways of going about it. You can leave quietly and move on without a peep, or you can unload all your ammo and fire from the hip. For Montreal Canadiens ex-goaltender coach Stephane Waite he decided he had some things to say after being released from his job.

Waite spoke with the media on Friday and had some interesting things to say about Carey Price and the Canadiens' expectations for their veteran netminder to adjust with having Jake Allen pushing him for minutes:

We expected that in January and February it’s gonna be tough for him to get his rhythm, his timing, his feel for the puck, seeing the puck well like he used to because Carey is not used to playing every two games. Every good No. 1 goalie is the league needs to play a lot to have the timing. We thought he might have some problems, but he would benefit in March and April when the plan was for Carey to play two games out of three.

We were very disorganized (in our own zone) and Carey wanted to do too much, cheat a little bit and once a goalie starts to not trust the defensive system, that’s when he starts to guess. Then there’s bad goals and he starts to lose his confidence and it becomes a snowball. That’s why the last four days before I was fired, we sat down and settled things down, said ‘OK, relax, come back to the basics.’ You could see he was too busy as a goaltender (and we said) just kept it simple, let the game come to you. I knew he was going to play well in Ottawa and I liked how (interim head Dominique Ducharme) made adjustments in our own zone.

Waite was fired mid-game last week and mentioned there was never any issues between him and Price during his tenure.

Too bad he couldn't say the same about his boss.