Happy Birthday Carey Price!!

Unlike Weber, Price did come back to play 5 more games at the end of the disastrous 2021-22 season, but it turned out it be more of a farewell tour as his body could no longer handle playing goalie every night anymore. Therefore, the 2021 Stanley Cup run was pretty much the end of Carey Price. Nonetheless, all we can do is thank Price for that run as it gave Habs fans something many of us fans like myself, an incredible run that led to nearly winning a Stanley Cup. If Price had better teams in front of him, perhaps in 2015 when Price had his best season, maybe the Canadiens would have made another Finals and even won a Cup during Price’s career if he just had the right guys playing in front of him.

Price deserved better teams in front of him, there is no doubt, but the other sad part of his career is how it got hampered by injuries, which cut his prime years down significantly. As previously mentioned, Price’s prime was between 2013 and 2017. After those years, it seemed like Price could no longer consistently be the top goaltender in the game as nagging injuries started to come back more and more. The worst injury that could have led to many more down the years came during the 2014 Eastern Conference Finals against the New York Rangers, where Chris Kreider came in hard and slid into Price’s pads, which caused him to injure his knee and miss the rest of the series. Third-string goaltender Dustin Tokarski handled his own, but the team wasn’t the same without their star goaltender, and they lost the series in 6 games. This whole situation will always be a “What if” moment, as Habs fans like to think, “Would the Canadiens have won the Stanley Cup if Price were healthy?” Truthfully, I believed that the LA Kings team in 2014, which eventually won the Stanley Cup, was deemed to win anyway, but it’s fun to speculate on what could have been.

Following that injury, Price had his best season ever, where he captured the Hart Trophy as league MVP, the Vezina Trophy as best goalie and shared the William Jennings Trophy with Corey Crawford of the Chicago Blackhawks for allowing the least amount of goals. Unfortunately, the team in front of him failed in the playoffs, and they fell in 6 games against the Lightning. After that season, that’s when the injuries piled up, and he’d have trouble staying healthy for the remainder of his career.

Price will always be remembered as the best Hab for the first quarter of the 21st century, as he led many sub-par Habs teams to the playoffs and even stole some big series.

The greatest moment of Price’s career will end up being the Gold Medal at the 2014 Olympics he secured for Canada, where he posted an incredible .971 save percentage with a 0.59 GAA, going undefeated in 5 games during the tournament. When it came to Canada, he always came up big and made us proud by winning every International tournament he played in. It’s just sad how the boys in Montreal couldn’t get the job down during his career to win the Ultimate Prize. Nonetheless, Price proved he was a winner, whether it was with the Hamilton Bulldogs (2007 Calder Cup) or Team Canada (2007 World Juniors, 2014 Olympics, 2016 World Cup of hockey). Price also retired as the wins leader in Habs history, with 361 wins.

Happy Birthday, Carey and thank you for everything you gave to the Canadiens for 15 years.

Sincerely,

All Habs fans