from Stu Cowan of the Montreal Gazette,

Well, Bergevin better hope really hard now that Carey Price doesn’t get hurt again after giving the goalie an eight-year contract extension on Sunday worth US$84 million. Price has one year left on his old contract and will be 38 during the final season of his new one, which comes with with an annual salary-cap hit of $10.5 million.

Two seasons ago the Canadiens missed the playoffs because Price suffered a season-ending knee injury in November. Price stayed healthy last season and the Canadiens made the playoffs, but were bounced in the first round by the New York Rangers despite Price posting an impressive 1.86 goals-against average and .933 save percentage. The Canadiens scored only 11 goals in the six-game series.

While Price has already earned every regular-season trophy a goalie can win — plus Olympic gold and a World Cup of Hockey with Team Canada — he has a career losing record of 25-31 in the playoffs with the Canadiens.

“Playoff hockey, you get your bounces,” Bergevin said. “We played the Rangers pretty good. I thought most of the games we outplayed them, but we lost. That’s just the bottom line … we lost.”

With that in mind, Bergevin must also be hoping he can come to a contract agreement with free agent Alexander Radulov, who was second in team scoring last season with 18-36-54 totals. Bergevin said he has made his final offers to Radulov and free-agent defenceman Andrei Markov and now it’s a case of “first-come, first-served” since he probably can’t afford to keep both. There’s also the case of restricted free-agent Alex Galchenyuk....

“We seem to forget that we traded for a kid, Jonathan Drouin, who has a high ceiling,” Bergevin said about a deal last month that sent top defence prospect Mikhail Sergachev to the Tampa Bay Lightning. “So we’ll go back and we’ll see what happens. But I feel comfortable if Radu doesn’t sign that Jo definitely could pick up the slack.”

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