Habs fans have been claiming the team is worthless without Price for years, and regularly make the "the team in front of him is garbage" argument whenever someone questions Price's value. His mediocre regular season numbers only suck because of the team. His lack of playoff success was because of the team. (This argument has now predictably switched to "his little bit of playoff success is in spite of the team, because they obviously all still suck".) But God forbid that anyone else say something even remotely similar to this, because then it's obviously not true and due to blind hatred of Price/the Habs/whatever, while simultaneously being confirmation that it's 100% true and proof that Price must be worth a ton.
The reality is that just the retention necessary to make Price's contract palatable is going to be significantly more expensive than Price is currently worth. There are significant questions about his health, his consistency, and his age, and even at 50%, he comes with a buy out proof cap hit of $5.25m for the next 4 years. For the privilege of taking on that extremely risky cap hit, teams only have to give up a 1st + A + B prospect (or more, depending on the Habs fan). The issue is that there's guys who don't have nearly as many risks who are available for significantly less. Maybe his ceiling is a little higher than anyone else, but that doesn't really do anything to mitigate those risks. So, what's the incentive to give up that much for Price? Why not just give Keumper a shot at the playoffs and keep all the assets?
