Should Carey Price’s sweater eventually be retired and hung from the rafters of the Bell Centre along with the jerseys of the 18 storied former Canadiens who have had that honour?
The first thing to make clear is that though it seems like he is, Price isn’t actually retired. He is technically still a Montreal Canadien but clearly he’ll never play another game for the team. He was on long-term injured reserve last season and presumably will be again this season and next, the last two years of his eight-year, $84-million contract.
His real last hurrah was that heroic run to the Stanley Cup final in the spring of 2021, a run that would not have happened without Price performing miracles between the pipes on a nightly basis. He injured his knee when Chris Kreider of the New York Rangers smashed into him — intentionally or unintentionally — in the conference final in the 2014 and that knee has been an issue for him ever since.
In the summer of 2021, after the appearance in the finals, surgeons cleaning out a torn meniscus discovered an osteochondral defect and they suggested surgery but Price declined, worried about its impact on his ability to function normally outside of the rink.
He played five games right near the end of the following season, but he clearly wasn’t able to perform anywhere near optimum level and that was it for his career.
His injury-plagued years after the Kreider hit are a big part of the reason there is so much debate about whether Price’s jersey should be retired. The season after the Kreider incident was Price’s best — he won the Vézina, Jennings and Hart trophies, along with the Ted Lindsay Award. But after that, his record was up-and-down, mostly due to injuries.
Does all the time lost to injuries take him out of the discussion for the Habs to one day retire his sweater? Not necessarily. I think the real reason his sweater shouldn’t be retired is his lack of playoff success. He only brought the Canadiens beyond the second round twice. He was on the team that made the conference final in 2010, but that was called The Halak Spring for the very good reason that Slovakian netminder Jaroslav Halak was the hero of those playoffs and Price hardly played.
In the conference final in 2014, he was knocked out of play in the first game, so that became the ultimate what-if run for the Canadiens. Would they have gone to the final and maybe won the Cup if Price had stayed healthy? We’ll never know. In 2021, Price did drag the team right to the finals, but then when he hit the biggest stage of his life, he simply wasn’t good enough. He said it himself in the press conference after the final game with the series won 4-1 by the Tampa Lightning.
“At the end of the day, I just don’t think I played well enough at the start of the series,” Price said at the time.
Of course much of that lack of playoff success has to do with the teams in front of him and his general managers have a lot to answer for. But the bottom line is he doesn’t have the post-season pedigree of virtually any of the players whose sweaters are retired. Is he really right up there with Maurice Richard, Jean Béliveau, Ken Dryden, and Guy Lafleur? To ask the question is to answer it.
At Serge Savard’s golf tournament last month, Dryden basically said Price deserves the honour, answering a question about whether his sweater should be retired.
“I won’t say anything because that’s somebody else’s decision,” Dryden said. “But I think the answer’s pretty clear.”
I have the utmost respect for Dryden as a player — six cups in just over seven seasons! — as an author and a human being, but he’s wrong on this one.
All you need to know is that Jacques Lemaire’s sweater hasn’t yet been retired. Lemaire’s former teammate Mario Tremblay recently said it’s an outrage Lemaire’s jersey hasn’t been raised to the rafters. And you have to agree. Lemaire won eight cups!
“With the number of cups that he won, I think it’s unforgivable that his sweater is not hanging from the roof of the Bell Centre,” said Tremblay. “I hope Mr. Molson will listen to what I just said.”
Lemaire certainly deserves to have his sweater hung there before Price.
Fans are divided on the issue of retiring Price’s sweater.
“If he ever gets to the Hall of Fame, I’d say yeah,” Ken McDonald said at the bar in McLean’s Pub this week. “But up until that time, I don’t think so and I don’t think he’s a Hall of Famer … to be honest with you.”
Armin Dehghan, also at McLean’s Wednesday, begs to differ.
“I believe it should,” Dehghan said. “He was the top goalie of his generation. And not only for what he gave to the Montreal Canadiens but what he gave to all the aspiring kids.”
Chris Hermann, also a fan, agrees.
“I’m not surprised there’s a debate about it,” Hermann said. “My personal opinion is that he’s done a lot for the team. He was the face of the team for some time. He’s done really great work. … We should honour him as a city and show that level of respect.”