To me, it's so depressing to think back to Price's relationship with the fans and media as a young player, and how his career ended up. I vividly remember how hard the city was on him for those first several years. The message was always that Price needs to learn how to handle the Montreal pressure cooker because all of the crap you deal with is worth it for the good times; he holds up his side of the bargain and becomes a great goalie, and we hold our side and make him a statue-worthy legend. He went above and beyond expectations, and in return we give him 18 months of Mike Cammalleri, the shell of John Drouin and Tie Domi's kid.
One of the moments I remember most from his early days was the game where he was letting everything in, the crowd was really giving it to him, and after an easy save, he waves his arms sarcastically. You wonder if that kid knew what his career would end up like, whether he'd sign that extension- we all know he wouldn't and would've been a Canes legend by now but now that he's riding off into the sunset, it's so sad how so much of the crap he put up with turned out to be all for nothing.
I hope he stays part of the org, but like people have said, I don't see it. Maybe they can give him a west coast scouting job where he can fly around in his biplane and scout out WHL goalies or something. I think he's a guy who's going to go retreat to his estate and we won't hear from him outside of future career achievement awards.
Man, even as a fan, Plek was my favourite player for years because he was the best player on a lot of bad teams, but we always knew he was really a second line center who was warming the seat of our first line center who we only sorta acquired like... two years ago with Suzuki. I thought we'd have a better C than Plek at some point during his playing career, I just didn't think it would happen when he was playing in Czechia...
