Another legendary goalie for the Montreal Canadiens is officially in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Carey Price was inducted over the weekend, alongside five other inductees. He received his custom ring, and his plaque was revealed.
“It took a few months for it to kind of sink in. Now, being here, it’s really hitting home,” Price said to the media on Saturday.
What’s particularly special for Price is something that many other greats who were netminders for the Canadiens can’t claim. It’s really an honor that most Hall of Famers can’t claim. He has the honor of having played each and every game of his career for the team.
"I've always been a pretty loyal person, and I've never been traded before, you know?” Price said on Saturday. “Even in junior, I played the same place my whole junior career, so I've always felt like it wasn't going to be my decision. It always felt like this is just where I was supposed to be, and it always felt like that, even when I felt like it might not be.”
He saw action in 712 NHL regular-season games, plus 92 playoff games to complement them. His memorable 2014-15 season saw him take home the Hart Memorial and the Vezina Trophy in the same season, which wasn’t achieved again until Connor Hellebuyck 10 years later. In eight total seasons, he received votes for the Vezina. All of that came while wearing a CH across his chest.
Why it's special Carey Price was a Hab for life
To get technical, he was traded to the Sharks, and the team had fun with it when he got inducted, jokingly referring to him as a Sharks legend. But that was purely a salary cap move. He never saw action with them.
Patrick Roy infamously wasn’t a Hab for life. Jacques Plante played in later seasons for the archrival Toronto Maple Leafs. Ken Dryden only played for Montreal, but his career was half the length by choice. Eight seasons in one place is more doable than 15.
Those are just the goaltending examples. Guy Lafleur, Larry Robinson and Serge Savard are other legendary Canadiens players who can't say they did what Price did. However, he can say he relates to other legends, including both the Richard brothers, Jean Beliveau, and Yvan Cournoyer.
So many factors can determine why a player doesn’t play a full career with one team. It may not even be that they play with someone else later in their career. Sometimes a career starts in one place, and it takes going elsewhere to find your footing and start the legendary trajectory.
We can look to the head coach of the Canadiens, Martin St. Louis, as an example of that. Even if the Lightning never traded him to the New York Rangers, he wouldn’t have played his entire career with Tampa Bay. He was briefly with the Calgary Flames before that, where his career looked like it could never get going.
So much has to align. For Price, it very much did. He was drafted by the team. He ultimately became their guy, and they never looked back. They didn't have to look ahead for a long time either. That's what's special about Price's time in Montreal.
Potentially, his spiritual successor in the lineage of great goalies could be here with Jacob Fowler. Many years still have to play out with him, but it’s fitting that the next one could be finding his way as the spiritual predecessor gets his plaque in Toronto.
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