On Tuesday, the Montreal Canadiens announced their theme nights for the season, and as we speculated in our article last month, November 10 will be the Carey Price celebration night ahead of a game against the Minnesota Wild. The former face of the franchise has been selected for the Hockey Hall of Fame this year in his second year of eligibility and will be inducted on Monday, November 9. Just like they did when former captain Shea Weber was inducted into the Hall, the Canadiens will then honor Price with an on-ice ceremony and add him to the Bell Center’s Ring of Honor.
The Ring of Honour was inaugurated in October 2008 and pays tribute to members of the organization who have entered the Hall. There, Price will join a long list of Canadiens players and builders, along with the most recent inductees: Shea Weber (2024), Pierre Turgeon (2023) and Guy Carbonneau (2019). The fact that the Canadiens’ announcement does not mention that Price’s number 31 going up in the rafters does not necessarily mean that he never will. The rafters and the Ring of Honours are not mutually exclusive. For instance, Patrick Roy, whose number 33 was sent up to the rafters on November 22, 2008, is also on the Ring of Honour.
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The Canadiens are never quick to retire a number. Roy retired from the NHL after the 2002-03 season, and he had to wait five years before he was sent up to the rafters, 13 years after his bitter departure from the organization. Guy Lapointe only saw his number 5 go up to the rafters in 2014, even though he retired back in 1983-84. That was a 30-year wait. Granted, the 5 was already in the rafters to honor Bernard “Boom Boom” Geoffrion, but until your name is on a banner up there, your number hasn’t been retired.
Carey Price’s NHL contract only just ended at the end of the season, and he held his retirement weekend celebration this summer, even though he didn’t make an official retirement announcement. He played the last game of his career in April 2022, just four years ago, and chances are the jury is still out on whether his jersey should be retired.
Those who advocate against the idea will tell you that he has never won a Stanley Cup and therefore shouldn’t be sent up to the rafters, especially when players like Jacques Lemaire (eight Stanley Cups), Steve Shutt (five Stanley Cups) and Guy Carbonneau (two Stanley Cups) have been bestowed with that honour.
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Should that be the ultimate factor in deciding whether a player should see his number retired? It’s more than debatable. The Canadiens haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1993, and with 32 teams in the NHL, it’s much harder to capture hockey’s ultimate prize. Furthermore, being a Cup champion doesn’t necessarily mean that you occupy a special place in the team’s history. Lemaire and Shutt might have won Cups, but they weren’t necessarily the main reason behind those Cup wins. They had Guy Lafleur, Ken Dryden and Serge Savard playing alongside them.
Price might not have won the Cup, but he is the goaltender who has the most wins in franchise history with 361; that’s nearly 50 more than second-place Jacques Plante, who had 314, and that’s 72 more than third-place Patrick Roy. Furthermore, the British Columbia native finished his career with a 2.51 goals-against average, a .917 save percentage and 49 shutouts. In comparison, Roy had a 2.78 GAA with the Canadiens, a .904 SV and 29 shutouts.
Whichever way you look at it, Price was the guiding light through very dark times for the Canadiens. Had it not been for his spectacular play and imposing presence, not much would have happened in Montreal for the last 20 years. He also won the Hart, Ted Lindsey, Vezina, William M. Jennings, and Bill Masterton Trophies over the course of his career. He was repeatedly named the hardest goalie to play against in NHL player polls.
More than anything, though, he accomplished what he did in an era in which the Habs had very little offense. The most talented offensive player he played with was Alexei Kovalev, who put up 84 points in 2007-08 when Price was in his first NHL season and 65 points the following year, his last with the Sainte-Flanelle. After that, only Tomas Plekanec and Max Domi recorded 70 points or more in a season with the Canadiens during Price’s career.
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If the netminder had played with the current Canadiens’ core, chances are he would have been a Stanley Cup champion. Still, management never surrounded him with as good an offensive group as Martin St-Louis has at his disposal right now. Instead, management preferred to put all its eggs in Price’s basket and hope that he could lead them to the promised land despite a lack of offensive production. That prevented Price from winning the Cup, but it shouldn’t prevent him from getting the ultimate individual honor. He did everything humanly possible with the cards he was dealt and bled red, white and blue for 15 seasons. He was not only the face of the franchise, but its heart, too.
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