Did Carey Price live up to his 8 year, $84M contract?

[MadLuke]

The single series of beating Toronto in the playoff was worth all of it.

 

[Perfect_Drug]

See how this current Habs roster is without Price? Well that's about the best roster he ever got to backstop. He was a 1-man show.

He turned this garbage squad of losers into a perrenial playoff team.



Remember the Wins / losses when Price got injured?


Sorry, but you all are insane. Price was an insane goalie. He just backstopped a putrid team.

 

[End on a Hinote]

I think so. He may have never got his ring, but he still won Olympic gold which IMO is a close second as far as team awards.

And as much as it sucks to say, especially being a fan of a fellow Canadian team, playing his entire career in Canada hindered his success as our teams have a reputation for poor management and difficult playing environments.

 

[Realgud]

See how this current Habs roster is without Price? Well that's about the best roster he ever got to backstop. He was a 1-man show.

He turned this garbage squad of losers into a perrenial playoff team.



Remember the Wins / losses when Price got injured?


Sorry, but you all are insane. Price was an insane goalie. He just backstopped a putrid team.

View attachment 949820

Wow! Did he really outplay the great Mike Condon in a 12 games played sample size? Amazing!

 

[JianYang]

When he resigned with Montreal in 2017, he was the highest paid goalie in NHL history. $10.5M for 8 years. Now 7 years later, he still is the highest paid goalie in the NHL despite him not playing for the past 2 years.

Price single handedly dragged his team to the cup final in 2020. But I have a feeling that because he did not win the cup, that he will be seen as a goalie who was never able to reach the level of other greats such as Roy, Brodeur, Hasek.

What do you think? Did he live up to his contract?

Well, he couldn't have because he was injured alot.

On a side note, I wonder what price and Weber were putting themselves through just to get ready for each game during that final run.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

Greatest goalie of a generation. The question is not whether carey ived up to Montreal. The question is whether Montreal lived up to Carey. Alex kovalevs 84 points in his first year were the only time in his entire career he had a ppg player on his team. With the exception of drafting Cole and trading for Nick (a fluke because they targeted Cody class) the past regime absolutely sucked at their jobs and let price down big time.

It’s tragic how they blew that team up so badly in 2017. Worst D I’ve ever seen. Not even Price could save it and I have no doubt it contributed to his personal demons.

End of the day though, he was money in the playoffs. Even in series where he lost he almost always played well.

He should be a 1st ballot HOFer.

 

[End on a Hinote]

Just to add, I think too many people put winning a cup as an important factor for weather someone should be a HOFer. I get back in the 6-21 team era, but there's 32 now with much more parity that it shouldn't be such an important factor as it once was.

 

[PaulD]

He did. However Bergevin inflated it as there were rumours Carey might want out of town. Ol' Bozo purple pants Bergevin was protecting his own job. As we all knew the Habs were a lottery team roster for years without Carey.
As good as Price was for the team.
What he did was turn a lottery team into a bubble team for many of those seasons. In the long run, cost the habs some great draft selections.
The two years Price was out 2016, 2022. Habs had worst record the league without him in both of those seasons.

 

[HuGo Sham]

aside from the troll takes for the usual cast of muppets, I would say objectivally no.
That being said, the culprit in all of this is Bergevin (as usual).
He built a team entirely around him, came to depend on him far too much and then made the idiotic, fatal error of never actually finding him a capable backup - until Jake allen who carried the Habs for a good portion of the covid cup season until Jesus Price was resurrected for the playoffs, thus flushing the leafs down the toilet. It was 3-1

Imagine giving CP31 all that money and then not investing in a backup that could play 35 games a year, thus prolonging his career.
Bergevin was a moron and didn't understand the concept of load management for a star goalie.

 

[Ezpz]

Pretty sure every owner except the ghost of melnyk would pay 84 mil for a finals appearance.

 

[IWantSakicAsMyGM]

Greatest goalie of a generation. The question is not whether carey ived up to Montreal. The question is whether Montreal lived up to Carey. Alex kovalevs 84 points in his first year were the only time in his entire career he had a ppg player on his team. With the exception of drafting Cole and trading for Nick (a fluke because they targeted Cody class) the past regime absolutely sucked at their jobs and let price down big time.

Which generation was that?

During Price's career, Tim Thomas won 2 Vezinas and a Cup, and put up the best SV% in a season by anyone not named Jacques Plante up to that point. Bob won 2 Vezinas. Vasi won a Vezina and 2 Cups. Quick won 2 Cups and 2 Jennings. Rask won a Vezina, and took his team to the Finals twice. Hellebuyck won the first of his 2 Vezinas.

Price won a single Vezina in a year when Crosby/Malkin both got hurt and the Ross winner had 87 points, which resulted in him also getting the Hart/Pearson. And a Gold medal on a team with the two most recent Ross winners, two recent Selke winners, and 2 Norris winners (plus Weber, a 3 time Norris finalist, and Doughty, who would win 2 years later).

 

[HuGo Sham]

Greatest goalie of a generation. The question is not whether carey ived up to Montreal. The question is whether Montreal lived up to Carey. Alex kovalevs 84 points in his first year were the only time in his entire career he had a ppg player on his team. With the exception of drafting Cole and trading for Nick (a fluke because they targeted Cody class) the past regime absolutely sucked at their jobs and let price down big time.

well said

 

[onmygameboi]

See how this current Habs roster is without Price? Well that's about the best roster he ever got to backstop. He was a 1-man show.

He turned this garbage squad of losers into a perrenial playoff team.



Remember the Wins / losses when Price got injured?


Sorry, but you all are insane. Price was an insane goalie. He just backstopped a putrid team.

View attachment 949820

Based on Wins and GAA posted above, Charlie Lindgren should have received the starter's spot and the massive contract.

Hell, he was undefeated!

 

[Le Tricolore]

As a Habs fan, I have no issues at all with the contract. When Price was healthy, he was absolutely worth it. Now that he isn't able to play, the cap hit doesn't impact the team at all, so whatever. Enjoy retirement, Carey. Looking forward to spending way too much for tickets when his number is put up in the rafters at the Bell Centre.

 

[tyhee]

The original post seems to mix two different issues. It speaks of whether Price's legacy will ever approach that of Roy, Brodeur and Hasek. The question asked is whether he lived up to his 8 year $84 million contract that covered the 2018-19 through 2025-2026 seasons. Those are two different issues.

As for his legacy, no, I don't think historically he'll be held in as high regard as Roy, Brodeur and Hasek. That may be due to him playing for a team that without him simploy wasn't very good and part of it is due to injury, but his single really great 2014-2015 season with it's awards leaves him well behind Roy's 5 Jennings and 3 Vezinas, Brodeur's 5 Jennings and 4 Vezinas nor Hasek's 3 Jennings and 6 Vezinas, to say nothing of the Stanley Cups won by the teams employing Roy, Brodeur and Hasek.

As to whether he "lived up to his contract" one should note that the contract referred to was for the years 2018-19 through 2025-26, not the earlier years in his career. He complied with his contract in that he played for them until he was injured and couldn't continue so technically the answer is yes, but the Canadiens certainly didn't get good value in paying him as the highest paid goalie in the game for eight seasons but getting 2.5 seasons in return, in which time he came 7th in the Vezina voting one season and didn't get a single Vezina vote in the other seasons. Habs fans may not care as they don't directly foot the bill and his injuries didn't have much effect on the team's salary cap (the biggest effect probably being that they couldn't accrue cap space while getting long term injury relief on his contract) but I don't think the Canadiens' owners wouldn't have approved that contract if they knew they'd be paying top dollar for 5 1/2 seasons of him not playing at all.

 

[MadLuke]

Well that's about the best roster he ever got to backstop. He was a 1-man show.

Maybe when both Subban-Markov played 80 games when they had a 110 pts season, they were almost league average offensively, those 2 healthy with Petry was not a bad defensive core at all.

2018-2022 Canadians

Price: .908, 2.77 GAA
91W-86L

not Price: .898, 3.04 GAA
59W-85L

Playoff
Price: .928, 2.13 GAA, 18W-14L

 

[CanadienShark]

His healthy play, yes. The whole contract, no.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

The original post seems to mix two different issues. It speaks of whether Price's legacy will ever approach that of Roy, Brodeur and Hasek. The question asked is whether he lived up to his 8 year $84 million contract. Those are two different issues.

As for his legacy, no, I don't think he'll be held in as high regard as Roy, Brodeur and Hasek. Some of that is due to playing for a team that usually wasn't very good and part of it is due to injury, but his single really great 2014-2015 season with it's awards leaves him well behind Roy's 5 Jennings and 3 Vezinas, Brodeur's 5 Jennings and 4 Vezinas nor Hasek's 3 Jennings and 6 Vezinas, to say nothing of the Stanley Cups won by the teams employing Roy, Brodeur and Hasek.

As to whether he lived up to his contract, he complied with his contract in that he played for them until he was injured and couldn't continue so technically the answer is yes, but the Canadiens certainly didn't get good value in paying him as the highest paid goalie in the game for eight seasons but getting two seasons in which he finished 7th in the Vezina voting once and got no votes the other full season, plus another half season or so and 5.5 years on the injured reserve list. Habs fans may not care as they don't directly foot the bill, but the Canadiens' owners wouldn't have approved that contract if they knew they'd be paying top dollar for 5 1/2 seasons of him not playing at all.

Having watched Roy and Price’s entire careers, I’d actually take Price as the better goalie. He beat better teams in the postseason with consistency and put up incredible numbers on mostly mediocre clubs. He could only dream of playing on the teams Roy had. Roy was great in the playoffs too but wildly inconsistent. Roy never had a big playoff upset in his entire career. Price did it all the time.

Having said that, Price will never be in Roy’s stratosphere of career. The teams he was on limited what he could do. As good as he was, those teams were never going to win a cup. It’s astounding he was able to lead them to the finals as he did.

The other thing that limited Price was health. He got injured at the worst times. End of game 6 in 2013 while we were ahead in the game. He wasn’t great that postseason but it looked like there was a game 7 to come. Then again in 2014 when Kreider ran him. Might’ve made the finals that year. Then he gets hurt when it looked like he was on track for back to back Vezina/Hart seasons.

So, great goalie. First ballot HoFer. But he’ll never quite be considered at that level. Health and bad clubs limited his legacy. Not as good as Hasek? No shame in that.

 

[rahad]

Not remotely.

After that contract was signed in the 2017 off-season, Price never received a single 1st place Vezina vote, or finished a season in the top 10 in SV% or GAA. And the team's only playoff appearances were due to special covid rules and they still barely made it in. Based on all of this, a $7.5m cap hit would have still been a pretty massive overpayment, even with his Covid Cup play.

I agreed that he did not live up to his contract. But at the same time, we had one of the worst rooster in the league and GM. Our last PPG has Alex Kovalev. He never has any help at offence With Max P being our best forward. Can't imagine what he could have done in Colorado with Nathan and Maker.

Having your goalie as the highest paid salary is never a good idea.

 

[ginomini]

Everyone says no as if a contract is evaluated in a vacuum. The money does not magically give you another player if you don't spend it. Price was absolutely worth it because he was Montreal's best player for that time. Sadly he got injured a lot and it shortened his career, but when he was healthy he was absolutely worth it. I really don't understand the "Price is overrated" rhetoric.

 

[IWantSakicAsMyGM]

I agreed that he did not live up to his contract. But at the same time, we had one worst rooster in the league and GM. Our last PPG has Alex Kovalev. He never has any help at offence With Max P being our best forward. Can't imagine what he could have done in Colorado with Nathan and Maker.

Having your goalie as the highest paid salary is never a good idea.

I don't disagree that the team and GM both sucked, but I can't help but wonder how much better their roster might have been with a cheaper goalie that could actually stay healthy and an extra $7 or 8m to spend on skaters.

And I can't imagine the cap issues Price would have caused in Colorado, and think adding him would have done much more harm than good.

 

[Bouboumaster]

You really still think that was on purpose? Yikes

On purpose?
Not sure

But is Kreider skating recklessly in the goalies?
f*** yeah
The dude had already a background of it, before running into Price

 

[Lshap]

Those stats have nothing to do with the contract years.
Easy answer to the thread question is no.

As I explained, those stats were posted in response to a few inaccurate comments about Price's prime, which is why he got the contract to begin with. Of course the contract ended up being bad, but you can't have a legitimate debate about it if you don't even know his history.

 

[lakeshirts37]

On purpose?
Not sure

But is Kreider skating recklessly in the goalies?
f*** yeah
The dude had already a background of it, before running into Price

whatever helps you sleep at night

 

[Lshap]

It’s tragic how they blew that team up so badly in 2017. Worst D I’ve ever seen. Not even Price could save it and I have no doubt it contributed to his personal demons.

End of the day though, he was money in the playoffs. Even in series where he lost he almost always played well.

He should be a 1st ballot HOFer.

The smart bet is that Price will be a 1st ballot HOFer.

And you're right about the playoffs. Even after injuries started affecting his regular seasons, Price was fantastic in the post-season. You could argue his contract was worth it just for the 2021 SCF run. I mean... it's not our money and he's been on LTIR while the team is rebuilding.