Montreal Canadiens Look to be Clearing Cap Space to Activate Carey Price For Tomorrow’s Game

The Montreal Canadiens have not had the benefit of having their best and most important player in the lineup yet this season.

Carey Price was spectacular in the playoffs last year, posting a 2.24 GAA and a .928 SV% as he helped the Habs make a lengthy run to the Stanley Cup Final. The goaltender had surgery shortly after the playoff run and was expected back around the start of the regular season.

But, things didn’t quite go as planned.  Price is yet to make his debut, but signs are starting to point to him possibly getting his first appearance of the season tomorrow night.

One of the complications of getting Price into the lineup is the salary cap. Luckily, maybe that is not the right word, but the Canadiens have a ton of injuries this season and can easily place someone on long term injured reserve to free up cap space to activate Price.

It looks like they just did that.

Jonathan Drouin has been out of the lineup since March 21st. The team has been aware that he will be out for the rest of the season, but only decided to place him on long term injured reserve today.

Without placing Drouin on LTIR, the Habs had enough cap space to activate a player or players with a total cap hit of $9.5 million. With Drouin on LTIR they can now activate a player or players making a total of $15 million.

Hrmmmm. Who is eligible to be activated and requires more than $9.5 million in cap space to do so?

That would be Carey Price who has a cap hit of $10.5 million. The Canadiens have a couple of other injured players, but none who require nearly as much cap space to get them into the lineup.

The move is really only necessary for one reason: Carey Price is ready to return to the lineup.

No announcement has been made yet, but signs are pointing toward Price making his season debut tomorrow night against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

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