Player Discussion Carey Price - Moving Home Edition

[Lafleurs Guy]

If you dropped Price into the 80s he would win ten out of ten vezinas. His mechanics are just on a completely different level from everyone who played at that time.

7 top ten Vezina finishes. Four top 20 Hart finishes. A playoff resume with several upsets. All on mostly mediocre to brutal teams. Where Price shined the brightest was in the postseason. He went several years undefeated when his club scored three goals or more. A shame he didn't get more support. As we've said, injuries and bad teams limited what he could accomplish.

Yeah, he was great and if we teleported him back in time he'd have killed. But part of him being better is having the benefit of watching players like Roy and those after him. The teleporter argument's a little unfair.

What is clear though is that Price was really consistent in the playoffs and won a lot of high pressure games. People may not remember this but those Team Canada wins weren't easy. We couldn't score al that well. He was the best player in that tournament for Canada.

Yes, I'd take him over Roy. Yes, I'd trust him in the playoffs in a big game over Roy. He was more consistent. He beat better teams. And I never knew which Roy was going to show up. I actually think Price was better. But there's just no way to argue that he's got the better resume. He doesn't. Is it fair? No. The teams are night and day different. But those kinds of comparisions have never been fair.

Again though, any shame in coming in after Roy? I don't think so.

 

[danisonfire]

This says it all.

 

[BehindTheTimes]

If you dropped Price into the 80s he would win ten out of ten vezinas. His mechanics are just on a completely different level from everyone who played at that time.

Absolutely not. For someone so hyped as Price is he has 1 season with a Vezina, 1. You’d also be taking away all his oversized equipment.

If not for Patrick Roy changing the way the position is played and revolutionizing the butterfly style there wouldn’t even be a Carey Price. That’s a fact.

This says it all.
View attachment 743436

No it doesn’t, any stat that has Frederik Anderson 3rd is deeply flawed.

 

[nhlfan9191]

7 top ten Vezina finishes. Four top 20 Hart finishes. A playoff resume with several upsets. All on mostly mediocre to brutal teams. Where Price shined the brightest was in the postseason. He went several years undefeated when his club scored three goals or more. A shame he didn't get more support. As we've said, injuries and bad teams limited what he could accomplish.

Yeah, he was great and if we teleported him back in time he'd have killed. But part of him being better is having the benefit of watching players like Roy and those after him. The teleporter argument's a little unfair.

What is clear though is that Price was really consistent in the playoffs and won a lot of high pressure games. People may not remember this but those Team Canada wins weren't easy. We couldn't score al that well. He was the best player in that tournament for Canada.

Yes, I'd take him over Roy. Yes, I'd trust him in the playoffs in a big game over Roy. He was more consistent. He beat better teams. And I never knew which Roy was going to show up. I actually think Price was better. But there's just no way to argue that he's got the better resume. He doesn't. Is it fair? No. The teams are night and day different. But those kinds of comparisions have never been fair.

Again though, any shame in coming in after Roy? I don't think so.

Didn’t Roy single handededly cost the Avs a cup in 2002 by hotdogging? Lol when he was on, he was really on. But like you said, his play was all over the place. It’s impossible to compare him to Price because the quality of teams each played for was drastically different. Given how consistent Price seemed to play in big games behind worse teams even as his body broke down, I’d definitely take him over Roy if I had to chose one in a high stakes game.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

Absolutely not. For someone so hyped as Price is he has 1 season with a Vezina, 1. You’d also be taking away all his oversized equipment.

If not for Patrick Roy changing the way the position is played and revolutionizing the butterfly style there wouldn’t even be a Carey Price. That’s a fact.


No it doesn’t, any stat that has Frederik Anderson 3rd is deeply flawed.

Roy didn’t invent the butterfly, he popularized it. Definitely an influential goalie. Price borrowed from him and Brodeur. Brodeur was a great stick handler but Price was next level. Aggressively on the puck enough to act like a third blueliner.

Roy was never a great puck handler. That being said, he has that time where he dekes Gretzky with the puck. I didn’t see that until years later. It’s amazing.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

Didn’t Roy single handededly cost the Avs a cup in 2002 by hotdogging? Lol when he was on, he was really on. But like you said, his play was all over the place. It’s impossible to compare him to Price because the quality of teams each played for was drastically different. Given how consistent Price seemed to play in big games behind worse teams even as his body broke down, I’d definitely take him over Roy if I had to chose one in a high stakes game.

The Statue of Liberty goal? Yeah that was bad. I would take Price as well for the consistency. A shame he didn’t have the clubs to work with.

As for Roy, he absolutely is one of the best ever. But when people call him the best ever, then it really attracts scrutiny. And when you look deeper, he’s not the perfect goalie leading bad teams to cups that people think he is.

People see the three Smythes, saw that he win on some teams that weren’t expected to win and make the leap that he beat crazy better teams. He never did. Not once. And they don’t know how bad he was most years either. They also don’t realize just how good defensively those Hab teams were. And the fact of the matter is that if we’d played the 86 Oilers or 93 Pens he wouldn’t be considered among the best at all.

In the flip side, Dryden gets dismissed as being a product of his team. And yet he led his team to the biggest upset year ever knocking off two heavily favoured powerhouses, one of which is one of the best teams ever assembled. And that was well before the Canadiens had assembled those great clubs. Roy never did anything close to that. Dryden’s resume is obscenely good. And the moment he retires early our team stopped winning cups.

Then there’s Hasek who put up crazy numbers on bad teams. Led his crappy team to the finals as Price did. Years of dominating and beat Roy head to head twice, once on a vastly inferior team.

Plante, Sawchuk… great goalies as well. Plante was the most innovative ever in how he corralled the puck.

So no, Roy is not the best ever. Great goalie but way overhyped in my opinion. And I loved Roy. I loved it when he winked at Sanstrom. I loved it when he made the comments to Roenick. He played otherworldly in those cup wins. He’s outstanding and without him we haven’t won a cup since 79. But people totally overlook his flaws and think he was beating the Oilers for cups and that’s not the case.

 

[Ezpz]

Absolutely not. For someone so hyped as Price is he has 1 season with a Vezina, 1. You’d also be taking away all his oversized equipment.

If not for Patrick Roy changing the way the position is played and revolutionizing the butterfly style there wouldn’t even be a Carey Price. That’s a fact.


No it doesn’t, any stat that has Frederik Anderson 3rd is deeply flawed.

Giguere had ginormous pads years before Price came into the league, it wasn't something that popped up in the 2010's. Price was just the best mechanically sound goalie that has ever existed up to this point. I still don't think there's a goalie as poised and "perfect" in the league as him now. Nobody makes it look as easy. Injuries are what derailed Price anyways, not the equipment changes.

Even if you take away the pads like you say, the vast majority of shooters in the 80's were on the level of a Paul Byron or less, not a Connor McDavid. Hockey was niche until Gretzky went to LA. It wasn't professional in the sense that guys trained with skilled coaches and real-time feedback for 14 years before being drafted, then followed five more years of development. Only the biggest stars of that time would even be capable of making the NHL in it's modern form. Skating in particular, the majority of guys in the 80's would be too slow. They had to do away with the corner shooting skills competition because in modern times even fourth liners can pick all four corners with ease.

You drop Carey in the 80s and everyone in his division's stats go down, that's the impact he has as a goalie. It's no surprise Carey retiring is when the NHL entered a new offensive age.

 

[BehindTheTimes]

Giguere had ginormous pads years before Price came into the league, it wasn't something that popped up in the 2010's. Price was just the best mechanically sound goalie that has ever existed up to this point. I still don't think there's a goalie as poised and "perfect" in the league as him now. Nobody makes it look as easy. Injuries are what derailed Price anyways, not the equipment changes.

Even if you take away the pads like you say, the vast majority of shooters in the 80's were on the level of a Paul Byron or less, not a Connor McDavid. Hockey was niche until Gretzky went to LA. It wasn't professional in the sense that guys trained with skilled coaches and real-time feedback for 14 years before being drafted, then followed five more years of development. Only the biggest stars of that time would even be capable of making the NHL in it's modern form. Skating in particular, the majority of guys in the 80's would be too slow. They had to do away with the corner shooting skills competition because in modern times even fourth liners can pick all four corners with ease.

You drop Carey in the 80s and everyone in his division's stats go down, that's the impact he has as a goalie. It's no surprise Carey retiring is when the NHL entered a new offensive age.

Your niche comments just aren’t true and this idea that players tiday are so much further along than players in the 80’s simply isn’t true. There are many, many examples that refute that claim. Ray Bourque was an all star in 1980 and in 2000, he was also better than Nik Lidstrom in the years their play overlapped.

There are 100’s of examples of the same thing.
For all Price’s superior technique and awesomeness, he has one Vezina to show for it. That’s it.

 

[Treb]

Your niche comments just aren’t true and this idea that players tiday are so much further along than players in the 80’s simply isn’t true. There are many, many examples that refute that claim. Ray Bourque was an all star in 1980 and in 2000, he was also better than Nik Lidstrom in the years their play overlapped.

There are 100’s of examples of the samething.

For all Price’s superior technique and awesomeness, he has one Vezina to show for it. That’s it.

Put him on Boston and he probably has 5.

 

[BehindTheTimes]

Put him on Boston and he probably has 5

Always, what could have been? Tuuka only had 1. There is no reason to believe Price would have more than him.

 

[Ezpz]

Your niche comments just aren’t true and this idea that players tiday are so much further along than players in the 80’s simply isn’t true. There are many, many examples that refute that claim. Ray Bourque was an all star in 1980 and in 2000, he was also better than Nik Lidstrom in the years their play overlapped.

There are 100’s of examples of the samething.

For all Price’s superior technique and awesomeness, he has one Vezina to show for it. That’s it.

Yeah ok, now go to the twentieth or thirtieth best player instead of the top 3 dman of all time and the undisputed best dman of the 80s. Even a HOF player like Luc Robitaille would struggle to make the NHL and stay relevant with how important skating is now. Which team would carry a PP specialist who would have 90% of his goals waived off for goalie interference? In between lockouts a lot of guys like that remained with poor skating but quickly fell off as interference started being called. There's nobody remotely similar to a Hal Gill in the NHL now because they would be -10 every game.

Better that comparing HoFers to each other, go into teams second and third liners in the 80's and tell me who would even make the NHL now. Carey would only need to be zoned in on the PP or against teams top lines, the rest of the time he'd basically be taking a nap. Fourth liners now have more skill than seconds liners did in the 80's. You could give random second liner from then a hundred chances to score on Price and they'd score zero to one fluke goal.


Also Lidstrom improved as he got better. The latter half of his career he was better than Ray Bourque ever was.

Ps. related to Paul Byron, he would have put up well over PPG numbers in the 80's until someone attacked him after the whistle. There are dozens to hundreds of guys like that from the past 5-10 years. Michael Grabner would have been Pavel Bure in the 80's. There are even dozens of guys in overseas leagues or the AHL that would have been superstars in the 80's. The talent pool is just so much deeper now.

Just look at a guy like Bob Crawford (Mark's brother), popped into the 80's, put up 60 points being force fed minutes, and never cracked 30 again and was out of the league in a few years. That kind of thing was super common back then, meanwhile it never happens now.

 

[Ezpz]

Always, what could have been? Tuuka only had 1. There is no reason to believe Price would have more than him.

Price would have passed Hasek's career all time SV% on Boston. Rask was .01% off as an inferior goalie. There was only a .05% separation between Rask and Price, and Price really tanked his numbers trying to play through injury in his last four seasons (really two seasons and a couple sub-ten game attempts to play). Price was only .01% off of Rask before that.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

Always, what could have been? Tuuka only had 1. There is no reason to believe Price would have more than him.

Except you know… the fact that he beat Rask head to head in a huge upset.

No doubt he’d have had some cups on Boston. No doubt his numbers would’ve been phenomenal. Not only that, he would been healthier. Rask enjoyed the best protection in the league.

 

[Tyson]

Is there a possibility that one day Carey Price has his number retired? Is he a future HOFer?

 

[Treb]

Always, what could have been? Tuuka only had 1. There is no reason to believe Price would have more than him.

Except the fact that Price is unarguably better than Rask. Not even in the same sphere of goalies.

 

[Treb]

Is there a possibility that one day Carey Price has his number retired? Is he a future HOFer?

Number retired? Probably not since he doesn't have a Cup. Ring of honor? Yes.

HOF? First ballot unless it's a crazy year.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

Number retired? Probably not since he doesn't have a Cup. Ring of honor? Yes.

HOF? First ballot unless it's a crazy year.

I’d retire his number. HOFer, won everything but a cup. It’s not the same league anymore and I think it’s silly to disqualify a player because he doesn’t have a cup. He deserves it in my opinion.

 

[Treb]

I’d retire his number. HOFer, won everything but a cup. It’s not the same league anymore and I think it’s silly to disqualify a player because he doesn’t have a cup. He deserves it in my opinion.

I agree, but I don't think the org will.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

I agree, but I don't think the org will.

You could very well be right.

 

[BLONG7]

The Statue of Liberty goal? Yeah that was bad. I would take Price as well for the consistency. A shame he didn’t have the clubs to work with.

As for Roy, he absolutely is one of the best ever. But when people call him the best ever, then it really attracts scrutiny. And when you look deeper, he’s not the perfect goalie leading bad teams to cups that people think he is.

People see the three Smythes, saw that he win on some teams that weren’t expected to win and make the leap that he beat crazy better teams. He never did. Not once. And they don’t know how bad he was most years either. They also don’t realize just how good defensively those Hab teams were. And the fact of the matter is that if we’d played the 86 Oilers or 93 Pens he wouldn’t be considered among the best at all.

In the flip side, Dryden gets dismissed as being a product of his team. And yet he led his team to the biggest upset year ever knocking off two heavily favoured powerhouses, one of which is one of the best teams ever assembled. And that was well before the Canadiens had assembled those great clubs. Roy never did anything close to that. Dryden’s resume is obscenely good. And the moment he retires early our team stopped winning cups.

Then there’s Hasek who put up crazy numbers on bad teams. Led his crappy team to the finals as Price did. Years of dominating and beat Roy head to head twice, once on a vastly inferior team.

Plante, Sawchuk… great goalies as well. Plante was the most innovative ever in how he corralled the puck.

So no, Roy is not the best ever. Great goalie but way overhyped in my opinion. And I loved Roy. I loved it when he winked at Sanstrom. I loved it when he made the comments to Roenick. He played otherworldly in those cup wins. He’s outstanding and without him we haven’t won a cup since 79. But people totally overlook his flaws and think he was beating the Oilers for cups and that’s not the case.

Some don't seem to understand we can love Patrick Roy, but also see him, for what he was......an amazing inconsistent goalie who won Cups on very good teams! Several hall of famers out in front of him..............
The guy was a beast at times in the playoffs............he was also beat badly in the playoffs. So many fans have selective memories.....maybe because they were so young when he played? Not sure....I just remember several times knowing he sucked and we were beat in the playoffs, and I felt we should have some of those series....

There have been amazing goalies on bad teams who did not win Cups....The King and Price first come to mind.....they were so much more technically better than Roy, but no Cups......go figure.

It's a topic that can be beat to death...........the one thing for sure is Price did NOT have the horses out in front of him to win a Cup.............he just simply didn't. That, was a failure of the organization.

 

[Ezpz]

I agree, but I don't think the org will.

We retired too many undeserving numbers. I am not sure we will ever retire another.

 

[BehindTheTimes]

Yeah ok, now go to the twentieth or thirtieth best player instead of the top 3 dman of all time and the undisputed best dman of the 80s. Even a HOF player like Luc Robitaille would struggle to make the NHL and stay relevant with how important skating is now. Which team would carry a PP specialist who would have 90% of his goals waived off for goalie interference? In between lockouts a lot of guys like that remained with poor skating but quickly fell off as interference started being called. There's nobody remotely similar to a Hal Gill in the NHL now because they would be -10 every game.

Better that comparing HoFers to each other, go into teams second and third liners in the 80's and tell me who would even make the NHL now. Carey would only need to be zoned in on the PP or against teams top lines, the rest of the time he'd basically be taking a nap. Fourth liners now have more skill than seconds liners did in the 80's. You could give random second liner from then a hundred chances to score on Price and they'd score zero to one fluke goal.


Also Lidstrom improved as he got better. The latter half of his career he was better than Ray Bourque ever was.

Ps. related to Paul Byron, he would have put up well over PPG numbers in the 80's until someone attacked him after the whistle. There are dozens to hundreds of guys like that from the past 5-10 years. Michael Grabner would have been Pavel Bure in the 80's. There are even dozens of guys in overseas leagues or the AHL that would have been superstars in the 80's. The talent pool is just so much deeper now.

Just look at a guy like Bob Crawford (Mark's brother), popped into the 80's, put up 60 points being force fed minutes, and never cracked 30 again and was out of the league in a few years. That kind of thing was super common back then, meanwhile it never happens now.

This post is pure nonsense.

 

[the valiant effort]

“One again Bobby Smith is no match for Ethan Bear!”

 

[Ezpz]

This post is pure nonsense.

I'm sorry you grew up with those guys as your heroes and can't admit that hockey, moreso than any other sport, has evolved since the 80's. This isn't golf where you can pop a great golfer into any era so long as you give them the golf clubs of the time. Nor is it football where a great QB can fit in on any team. Nor is it soccer where there is no equipment to influence the game, and it has already had development programs for centuries.

Rule changes, equipment changes, and professional analysis and training have provided hockey players with a lot more science-based improvements that have absolutely created a gap in skill between older generations and the current. It is not a gap that should widen over the next few decades, as they're already pretty much at the pinnacle of modern skate and stick developments (or at least companies seem to be innovating a lot less since the invention of composite sticks), so it will be much easier to compare skills between the post-lockout generation to the next 20-30 years.

Half of hockey players in the 80's didn't even work out, how would you expect them to compete against modern NHLers? Nutrition and fitness alone in the past 30 years has evolved to a point where current young people who work out and eat using modern methods are considerably stronger than their parents or grandparents generations. Skating as a skill wasn't even mandatory in the NHL back then. Guys who are considered slow in 2023 would be in the upper half of the league in 1983. I implore you to go back and watch a game from the 80's with modern eyes and tell me a guy like McDavid wouldn't put up a 400 point season or Price wouldn't get 25-30 shutouts a year.

Your username is very appropriate.

It's like you said, Roy was a trendsetter but he is not even a top 50 butterfly goalie of all time in terms of skill. He popularized it and everyone worked upon what he built. That doesn't mean Roy isn't a hall of famer or one of the greatest of all time, it just means that Roy had to build something without direction, it's not possible to perfect something the first time. You're basically arguing that a 1920's Ford Model A Deluxe Roadster could beat a $500 dollar 2011 beater in a race, which simply would never happen. Now send a 2023 F1 racecar into the past and tell me that it wouldn't win every single race. That's Carey Price in the 80's.

 

[JianYang]

Some don't seem to understand we can love Patrick Roy, but also see him, for what he was......an amazing inconsistent goalie who won Cups on very good teams! Several hall of famers out in front of him..............
The guy was a beast at times in the playoffs............he was also beat badly in the playoffs. So many fans have selective memories.....maybe because they were so young when he played? Not sure....I just remember several times knowing he sucked and we were beat in the playoffs, and I felt we should have some of those series....

There have been amazing goalies on bad teams who did not win Cups....The King and Price first come to mind.....they were so much more technically better than Roy, but no Cups......go figure.

It's a topic that can be beat to death...........the one thing for sure is Price did NOT have the horses out in front of him to win a Cup.............he just simply didn't. That, was a failure of the organization.

I have not seen a goalie that is considered one of the all time greats not go through stretches of inconsistency in their careers, whether it's bad stretches in a season or a particularly bad series.

When it comes to Patrick Roy, I don't think there's another goalie I'd want in net if it was game 7 overtime with the cup on the line (except if Neely was on the other side :p). From my viewing (going back to early 90s), it's between Roy and hasek.