If you ask any Montreal Canadiens fan my age who the most important player of their generation was, you’ll get one answer: Carey Price.
Despite backstopping some of the most underwhelming Habs rosters ever assembled, number 31 always put on a show in net, and he had stats (and the hardware) to prove it.
But before we get into all that, if you had any doubt about the love Canadiens fans feel for their former goaltender, Tuesday night’s ceremony should have put it to rest.
Price, who was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto on Monday, returned to the Bell Centre the following night for a pregame ceremony ahead of the Canadiens’ game against the Minnesota Wild, complete with a tribute video, a speech from the man himself and the unveiling of his plaque in the Ring of Honour.
Ring of Honour vs. the rafters
With the induction, Price became the 62nd member of the Canadiens organization to make the Hall of Fame, which is also what earned him a spot in the Ring of Honour, since every Canadiens alumnus who gets inducted is added automatically. What it doesn’t guarantee is a number hanging from the rafters, which is the question fans have been asking since the team announced the ceremony in August. Geoff Molson was asked about it by RDS later that month and said it’s too early and that the team isn’t having those discussions, though he did add that Price was among the best goalies in the world when he played.
I’d argue that it isn’t too early, considering it’s been more than four years since Price last played a game, and that the case for number 31 is a lot stronger than the “no Cup, no banner” crowd would have you believe.
Expectations met and exceeded
It starts with the fact that Price was never given the chance to ease into the job. Drafted fifth overall in 2005, he arrived in Montreal with sky-high expectations and was handed the crease of the most storied franchise in hockey, in a city where a goalie can’t have a rough week without it turning into a citywide debate. The pressure of playing in Montreal is unlike what players face in almost any other market, and while plenty of them have buckled under it, some rise to the occasion. Price did, even after some early growing pains that included losing the starting job to Jaroslav Halak during the Habs’ 2010 playoff run.
And what an ascension it was. In 2014-15, Price went 44-16-6 with a 1.96 goals-against average, a .933 save percentage and nine shutouts, a season that earned him the Hart, the Vezina, the Ted Lindsay Award and the Jennings Trophy at the NHL Awards.
What makes that even more impressive is how little help he usually had in front of him. Alex Kovalev scored 84 points in 2007-08, Price’s rookie season, but no Hab reached the 80-point mark again until Nick Suzuki did it in 2024-25 (a 17-year gap that covers the rest of Price’s career). By comparison, the Canadiens had two 80-point players last season alone, with Suzuki at 101 and Cole Caufield at 88.
The same goes for the playoffs, where Price’s best runs came with rosters that, on paper, had no business going that deep. In 2014, he had Montreal in the Eastern Conference Final before Chris Kreider crashed into him in Game 1 and knocked him out of the series, which the Habs went on to lose in six. Then in 2021, he carried a team that finished with 59 points, the fewest of any playoff qualifier that year, all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, the franchise’s first since 1993.
Stats and hardware
The rest of his résumé is just as hard to argue with. Price won the Calder Cup with the Hamilton Bulldogs in 2007 and was named playoff MVP, and took World Juniors gold that same year.
On the international level, he backstopped Canada to Olympic gold in Sochi in 2014 with a 0.59 goals-against average and a .972 save percentage, and added the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, going 16-0 for Canada between 2007 and 2016. He was also a seven-time All-Star and is the winningest goalie in franchise history with 361 wins, more than Patrick Roy, Jacques Plante and Ken Dryden. In an era when players routinely chase bigger markets and better odds at a Cup, he played every one of his 712 NHL games in a Canadiens sweater.
The no-Cup argument
Now for the big red, white, and blue elephant in the room. Every number the Canadiens have retired belongs to a Stanley Cup winner, (15 numbers honouring 18 players in total) and Price doesn’t have a ring. That’s a fair argument, especially for a franchise that has won 24 Cups and takes its banners very seriously, but it doesn’t account for how much the game has changed.
Plante played in a six-team league, Dryden won his Cups when the NHL had somewhere between 14 and 18 teams, and even Roy’s two with the Canadiens came with 21 and 24 teams in the league. I don’t say that to take away from any of those goaltender’s accomplishments, but Price spent his entire career in a league of 30 teams or more, with a salary cap designed to keep everyone close, which makes getting through four rounds a much taller order than it was for those who came before him. Going on deep runs with the rosters he was given should count for something.
It also helps to look at how other teams have handled it. Roberto Luongo never won a Cup, and the Panthers retired his No. 1 in 2020. Henrik Lundqvist never won one in New York, and the Rangers raised his No. 30 to the rafters. Pekka Rinne, who went into the Hall of Fame in the same class as Price, had his No. 35 retired by the Predators just months after he hung up the pads. It’s hard to imagine anyone arguing that any of those honours weren’t deserved, and Price belongs in that same conversation.
Had he played almost anywhere else, this probably wouldn’t even be a debate.
Even Dryden, who won six Cups with the Canadiens and knows a thing or two about what it takes to get a number hung at the Bell Centre, was asked about the idea back in 2024. He said it wasn’t his decision to make, but added that he thought the answer was pretty clear.
Some will point to Saku Koivu and Andrei Markov, who were each given pre-game tribbutes at the Bell Centre without their numbers ever going up, as proof that a ceremony doesn’t always lead to a banner. That’s also fair, but neither of them was ever named league MVP, and Price was, in a season where he also took home the Vezina.
For now, number 31 hangs in limbo. Nobody has worn it since Price’s last game, and it’s hard to picture any goalie wanting to be the next one who does.