Carey Price’s thought process throughout this week is something we are never likely to know. He has always said he loved the Canadiens, loved being a part of it despite the pitfalls of being a starting goaltender in Montreal. Price volunteering to waive the no-movement clause on his contract to allow Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin to expose him in the expansion draft, therefore, came as a bit of a surprise.
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Price either felt very confident that the combination of his massive contract and certain health questions surrounding a knee and perhaps even a hip issue would scare the Seattle Kraken away or the consequence of his decision was something he would always be able to live with. Again, we can’t know exactly what he was thinking, but the possibility of moving on to Seattle could not have been all that unappealing to Price, otherwise he would not have taken the risk of that very thing happening.
Does that mean Price was dying to leave Montreal? No, not necessarily. In fact, the likeliest motivation for him to lift his no-movement clause was to help the only NHL team he has ever played for, to allow the Canadiens to keep his backup Jake Allen knowing full well that the chances of him being selected by Seattle were slim to none.
But if Price were going to leave Montreal to go somewhere, it’s not difficult to imagine that Seattle being that somewhere did not particularly bother him.
The Kraken gave it some thought, but ultimately decided against selecting Price in the expansion draft, and there are any number of reasons why they may have come to that conclusion. But now that they have, there is a reality that has settled in.
Carey Price will undoubtedly finish his NHL career in a Canadiens uniform.
This was really the only conceivable opportunity Price had to change the course of his career. The contract that likely scared the Kraken away makes him nearly impossible to trade, and even if the Canadiens were able to find a team to take him, Price still has that no-movement clause that allows him to call the shots. Ever since the Kraken became the NHL’s 32nd franchise, the possibility that Price wouldn’t mind playing close to his wife Angela’s hometown of Kennewick, Washington, has been percolating in the background, though it always felt like it would never happen. But it almost did.
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Now that Seattle has taken a pass, the reality that Price will play his entire career in a Canadiens uniform seems impossible to refute. He turns 34 on Aug. 16 and has just over $44 million left over the final five years of his $10.5 million a year contract.
Price is not going anywhere.
What’s been interesting to watch ever since the news emerged Saturday evening that Price was making himself available in the expansion draft has been the sense of panic it created. What he did in the playoffs is a good explanation for that, because Price at his best is something special, and we just watched Price at his best for two months. The impact he can have on a team’s fortunes when he plays like he did in the playoffs is very real.
But the reality of Price is never that simple.
His regular-season goals saved above expected, per Evolving Hockey, was 42nd out of 60 goalies who played at least 500 minutes this season. The season before, Price was 54th. But in the playoffs, Price was the third-best goalie by that metric, and he would have been the surefire Canadiens Conn Smythe Trophy winner if they would have been able to pull off the upset in the final against the Tampa Bay Lightning. In last year’s playoffs, Price was fourth in goals saved above expected.
This, in a nutshell, is Price today. He gives you a chance to win in the big games, but the less important ones are a bit of an issue.
The expansion draft was an opportunity for Price, even if it was one he might not have fully wanted. Still, getting a chance to have a new start, to pursue that first Stanley Cup with a new franchise could have been viewed as an opportunity. It didn’t happen.
But Price still has an opportunity in front of him.
Over the next five years, Price can cement his place in Canadiens history. He has already done so much to lay that groundwork. He’s won a Hart Trophy, a Vezina Trophy, a Ted Lindsay Award, an Olympic gold medal, a World Cup of Hockey championship. He’s played more games and won more games than any goalie in franchise history. The one thing he is missing is the one thing he came within three wins of achieving this summer.
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The notion of having his number retired by the Canadiens may not matter to Price. It’s difficult to tell with him. But the history of the franchise most definitely does matter to him, and his place in that history does as well.
Despite their trip to the final, the Canadiens appear to be at a bit of a crossroads. Bergevin has one year left on his contract and this might be his final season as GM. Shea Weber’s health is a massive question mark. Phillip Danault is all but gone. Jonathan Drouin is likely gone as well. The Canadiens have a good core of veterans signed long term like Brendan Gallagher, Jeff Petry, Tyler Toffoli, Joel Edmundson and Josh Anderson, to name a few, but the team will turn more toward the young group of Nick Suzuki, Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Cole Caufield and Alexander Romanov in the coming years. Maybe even next season.
In the middle of all that is Price, who has been a divisive superstar for almost his entire career, dating back to when half the fan base preferred keeping Jaroslav Halak instead of him 11 years ago. There has been little unanimity surrounding Price ever since, and there probably still isn’t today. There will be those who will believe this was a missed opportunity to unload Price’s contract while others are likely relieved Price is still around.
It has been the story of his career.
But Price still has time to write a new story on a changing Canadiens team, one that will be infused with more youth in the coming years as he continues to age, one that still seems to be navigating the mushy middle of the NHL while that youth develops, one that will need the best version of Price, the version we saw in the playoffs, more often in the regular season if it wants to elevate from that middle ground.
Price now has that opportunity, to cement his legacy in Montreal, to remove the divisiveness that has followed him around for so long.
He will need to do something extraordinary to do it, but that seems fitting because the reward would be equally extraordinary. It would remove any doubt of Price’s place in the history of the most storied franchise in the NHL.
(Photo of Carey Price and Andrei Vasilevskiy: Dave Sandford/NHLI via Getty Images)
