Carey Price was still hoping for a miraculous return to the ice after his knee suddenly healed. But the miracle is long gone.
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Price has put away his mask and leg warmers since the end of the 2021-2022 season. He didn’t play a single game last year and will remain in the infirmary next season. And the next. And the other after that.
The masked Canadian has not formalized his retirement due to financial concerns. If he did that, he would be giving up the last three years of his contract, which would net him a total of 23.5 million.
Logically, he won’t sign the official NHL papers until the end of the 2025-2026 season, the final year of his lucrative eight-year, $84 million contract. Price closed an important chapter in his career Tuesday by selling his residence in Candiac on Montreal’s South Shore.
In a story series on Instagram, Angela Price documented the emotional farewell to the small family.
“I don’t feel like it’s a goodbye to Montreal because we’ll be back often, but I do feel like it’s a goodbye to our home and neighborhood,” Angela Price wrote. There are many feelings and emotions that I will talk about later, I’ve cried on the plane and we haven’t even taken off yet. […] But our hearts will always be in Montreal.”
Paul Byron, another Canadiens probably playing his last NHL game, was among the friends who greeted the Price family as they met in a truck en route to the airport in Kelowna, Columbia. British.
The Price family is therefore returning to the goalkeeper’s home province, where they renovated their home in 2021. The number 31 grew up on Anahim Lake, a Native American reservation, but spent most of his summers in Kelowna, where several players from the NHL played residents.
- Listen to the column of Florence Lamoureux, research journalist at QUB Radio, on the microphone of Alexandre Dubé QUB radio:
One of the greats
Price was selected for the fifth time overall in the first round of the CH in 2005 and shaped the team’s image during his 15 seasons in Montreal.
From an easygoing teenager to making his debut after a glorious junior career with the Tri-City Americans and on the international stage with team Canada at the World Juniors, Price spent many seasons earning the title of best goaltender in the world. Although he didn’t win the Stanley Cup, he was always described by his rivals as the greatest in his position.
A knee that won’t heal
But Price’s career faltered after the team’s magical run to the finals in 2021.
He never regained the form of his heyday due to a knee injury and attempted a brief comeback at the end of the 2021–2022 season.
At his last press conference in October 2022, number 31 had insisted on his wish to get well in order to play with his three children or go for a walk with one of them in his arms.
To dream of a return to the game, the number 31 would need surgery like the Colorado Avalanche’s Gabriel Landeskog. This is an operation in which a plug of bone and cartilage is removed from another area of the knee and then inserted into a damaged part.
“The success rate is less than 50%,” Price said. I’ve spoken to people who have had this type of surgery and it has taken them over a year to recover.
In Landeskog’s case, he’s a winger and therefore doesn’t have the same physical strain on his knees as a goalkeeper.