Montreal Canadiens: Carey Price Will Be Ready For Start of Season
Montreal Canadiens goaltender Carey Price was unprotected in the expansion draft earlier this week but was not selected.
The goaltender has five years left on a contract that carries a $10.5 million cap hit. Though that would have been a big ticket to take on, the Seattle Kraken were rumoured to still be interested and the ownership group gave the green light to general manager Ron Francis to take Price.
However, the Canadiens announced just days before the draft that Price had a very complicated injury going on and was going to need to be seen by a specialist on Friday and they couldn’t update the medical report until then.
Well, it is Friday now and it turns out Price was not going to see a specialist to get a second opinion on his knee, but he was heading in to get surgery done. The surgery was successful today and the team released a statement saying that Price will have a 10-12 week recovery period but should be ready to go for the start of the regular season.
Ten weeks from today would put us at October 1, and twelve weeks from now would be October 15. The Canadiens first game for next season is scheduled for October 13. So, Price might be a bit late showing up for camp, but he should be back for the start of the season.
This was a pretty hefty amount of misdirection by Marc Bergevin. He left Price unprotected in expansion because he wanted to also keep Jake Allen with the team. He protected Allen and kept the Kraken’s tentacles off Price by playing up his injury situation.
It might seem a bit offside, but the Canadiens didn’t lie about an injury, they just said they were concerned Price wouldn’t be able to start the season. That made it sound pretty dramatic, but the Kraken would have had access to Price’s medical records and made their own decision based off that.
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It might sound a little shady, but the Canadiens just lost the Stanley Cup Final to a team that spent about $18 million over the salary cap, so is it really over the line by NHL standards?