The Cost Of Price

It was a tough pill to swallow on Thursday for Montreal Canadiens. Acquiring Sean Monahan from the Calgary Flames will certainly give them more depth for their forwards this coming season, but having general manager Kent Hughes all but confirm that Carey Price's career is over means that one of the greatest goalies of this generation likely won't get to finish his career on his own terms. Price is still suffering from the same knee injury that kept him out of all but five games last season, and he certainly didn't look like himself in a couple of games. If Price is unable to play this season, we may start talking about his career in the past tense rather than with hope for the future.

The 35 year-old is signed through the 2025-26 season where it was assumed that the Canadiens may have been able to rebound from a few lacklustre seasons thanks to smart drafting and shrewd roster moves. Marc Bergevin, the man who orchestrated Price's $84 million, eight-year deal, is no longer with the Canadiens, and it seems that Kent Hughes is in the unenviable position of having to decide what to do with a goaltender seen as a fixture in the Montreal nets.

Price still has to report in the fall for a physical which he'll likely fail, and that will allow Hughes to find some salary cap relief as Price will be placed back on LTIR. With the Canadiens currently more than $6 million over the cap ceiling, they need that relief desperately. Beyond that, Kirby Dach still sits without a contract as a restricted free agent while goaltender Cayden Primeau - the only netminder in Montreal's system as a prospect - also is unsigned.

Price was a fantastic option for many years for the Canadiens, but ignoring the potential players who could have stepped in for Price had he been injured (like he currently is) is a failure that the Canadiens easily could have avoided. Emmett Croteau was taken in the sixth round this year, Joe Vrbetic was taken in the seventh round last year, Jakub Dobes was taken in the fifth round in 2020, and Frederik Dichow was taken in the fifth round in 2019 since Primeau was drafted in 2017. None have signed, it seems, but I find it odd that the Canadiens haven't produced an NHL-calibre goaltender since Price in 2005.

For those asking, Zach Fucale played four games in the NHL as the only goalie to even appear in the NHL as a Canadiens goaltending draft pick since Price! And he didn't even play those games in the bleu-blanc-et-rouge!

One has to wonder if the luxury of having a game-changing netminder standing in the blue paint caused the Canadiens to shift their focus away from drafting goalies in rounds higher than the fourth-round, but selecting just one goaltender in Rounds One, Two, or Three of the nine goalies they chose since Price was picked in 2005 shows a glaring problem with the management and scouting in Montreal's system. They're not the only team to fall into this trap - Winnipeg seems destined to follow a similar path - but it's one that should have been addressed with the cap space the Canadiens once had before taking on a number of contracts this summer.

As we know, that didn't happen, and the Canadiens stand on the precipice of the 2022-23 season with Jake Allen and Sam Montembeault as their tandem which didn't exactly pan out one year ago. That's not to say that neither are capable of grabbing the reins and going on a crazy run that would defy all statistical trends, but the likelihood of that happening seems far closer to the same number of games Price will likely play for the Canadiens this season: zero.

There's no doubt that the Canadiens were blessed by having Carey Price guard their net for a long time. The problem, though, is that there's a cost to that blessing in that it kind of lulled the Canadiens into this false sense of security that Price wasn't going to falter or be seriously injured as the Canadiens used trades and draft picks to upgrade their roster elsewhere rather than having security net in case something catastophic happened to Price. Having failed to address this issue combined with their salary cap issues, the Canadiens can't do much to fix the problem unless they overhaul their roster again.

Having a goaltender provide consistent all-world netminding night in and night out isn't something many teams can boast. Montreal could for a while, but they failed to account for any sort of problem that may derail that luxury. They didn't draft another highly-ranked goaltending prospect, they failed to develop one, and they have yet to be able to find one on the trade market or via free agency. This has been an issue since Jaroslav Halak played in Montreal, and none of Peter Budaj, Dustin Tokarski, Mike Condon, Ben Scrivens, Al Montoya, Antti Niemi, or Keith Kinkaid made the cut. Allen and Montembeault will get another shot by default this season, but I'm not holding my breath on either of them being the saviours that Canadiens fans are seeking.

Carey Price and the Montreal Canadiens have seen some amazing highs, some incredible achievements, and set some great records, but every player's timeline is finite. The Canadiens should have seen this coming as Price got older, and they should have been planning for the inevitable end of his storied career at some point by drafting or finding a suitable replacement for Price so the legacy of amazing goalies in Montreal could continue.

Instead, they squandered draft picks, wasted cap valuable cap space, and made trades for players who could never measure up to what Price did in the crease for the Canadiens on a nightly basis. Take nothing away from the goaltenders listed above as they did their best and that's all that can and should be asked of them, but this problem was one created by Marc Bergevin and has yet to be solved by Kent Hughes. Until Hughes figures out where to find the next franchise-altering netminder, the Canadiens will find themselves likely struggling in the standings as Price rehabs his kneee injury from afar.

For all the good that Price did on the ice for the Canadiens, his incredible play somehow forced Canadiens management into forgetting how to do their jobs effectively. That's the cost of having an incredible talent like Carey Price.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!