It’s been over four years since Carey Price played his final game in a Montreal Canadiens sweater, and nobody’s worn number 31 since.
Price spent the last few seasons of his illustrious career sidelined by a long-term injury before his contract got dealt to the San Jose Sharks last September. And he officially hung up the pads when his eight-year deal expired at the end of the 2025-26 season.
Now the Canadiens are bringing him home. This week, the team announced Price will be honoured at the Bell Centre on November 10, a day after he’s inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, with an on-ice ceremony at the Bell Centre.
Montreal’s longtime starting goalie will become the 62nd alumni member in franchise history to make the Hall, and his name goes up in the Bell Centre’s Ring of Honour alongside recent additions Shea Weber (2024), Pierre Turgeon (2023) and Guy Carbonneau (2019).
That honour is well deserved, even without a championship ring to his name.
Over 712 career games, all with Montreal, Price put up a 2.51 goals-against average and a .917 save percentage, and he still holds the franchise records for games played and wins by a goalie, with 361. He made seven All-Star teams and swept some of the league’s biggest individual hardware along the way: a Hart Trophy, a Vezina, the Ted Lindsay Award, a share of the Jennings in 2015, and a Masterton in 2022. He also won gold with Canada at the 2007 World Juniors and again at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
But one burning question remains: will the Canadiens retire his number?
Getting into the Ring of Honour isn’t the same as having a number hanging from the rafters, and that gap is exactly what folks have been arguing about online. When the Canadiens dropped the announcement, fans on social media wondered whether the wording meant his number wasn’t getting retired at all, and whether anyone else in the Ring of Honour had eventually made that leap.
Some pointed out Price never won a Cup, and every number Montreal has retired so far belongs to someone who did.
Others weren’t having it, arguing his individual résumé should be enough on its own, especially for a goalie who put up a Hart-Vezina-Masterton combo that almost nobody else has.
Montreal’s been through this before, too. Saku Koivu got a nearly identical night back in 2014, and years of speculation that his number would eventually get retired. It never happened, and there’s no sign it’s coming. The same is true for Andrei Markov, who was given his own pre-game ceremony last season.
But had Price played for almost any other team, this probably wouldn’t even be a debate.
Roberto Luongo never won a Cup either, and the Florida Panthers retired his No. 1 anyway back in 2020. Henrik Lundqvist didn’t win one in New York, and the Rangers raised his No. 30 up to the rafters at Madison Square Garden. Both goaltenders are considered franchise legends who just happened to play in a Cup-less stretch. That’s Price’s story too, except he played in a city where every retired number belongs to at least one of 24 championship-winning rosters.
Whether the Habs decide Price is the one who breaks that pattern, or whether he ends up stuck in Koivu territory, is still up in the air. November 10 might clear some of that up. And no matter what happens, it should be a night to remember.
Single-game tickets go on sale September 14, with multi-game packs available starting August 21.