Price took inspiration from Canadiens legends on way to Hockey Hall of Fame

The 2026 Hockey Hall of Fame induction is Nov. 9. This year's class includes Patrice Bergeron, Cindy Curley, Carey Price, Pekka Rinne and Keith Tkachuk in the Players category, and Brian Burke in the Builders category. Here, NHL.com columnist Dave Stubbs profiles Price.

As he quietly slipped past Montreal Canadiens goaltending legends one after another on the all-time lists, Carey Price never more than briefly paused to consider his climb up the rankings of the NHL’s most storied franchise.

On Monday, the winningest goalie on a team that’s older than the League itself will be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. And still, Price hasn’t sharply put into perspective his place with the Canadiens and the game at large.

“I’m definitely going to be going down that road,” Price said during summertime conversation from his home in Kelowna, British Columbia.

In a wide-ranging talk, Price would reflect on a remarkable body of work that brings him to Class of 2026 enshrinement in his second year of eligibility, joining many of hockey’s greatest players, brilliant goaltenders among them.

Carey Price poses in the press room after winning (from left) the William M. Jennings Trophy, Vezina Trophy, Ted Lindsay Award and the Hart Memorial Trophy at the 2015 NHL Awards in Las Vegas.

“When you start out, you’re not thinking that you want to be a Hall of Famer,” he said. “That’s not a goal of any kid. They just want to play hockey to the highest level they can. Honestly, I don’t think being in the Hall of Fame has hit me yet. It probably won’t until I’m sitting there in November.

“When you’re in it, you’re so goal-oriented and task-focused that sometimes you lose sight of looking around and being in the present. Definitely there were times when I did have moments of awe and appreciation, but I was always so focused on what I was trying to do that when I was in it, I didn’t really see an end to it or see my place in it. I was completely focused on what I was doing and trying to stay where I was at.”

Price was four provinces and three time zones west of the Toronto shrine on June 22 when his phone rang with news of his election, Mike Gartner and Ron Francis -- respectively the Hall’s chair and selection committee chair -- calling to give him the news.

Carey Price signs his first professional contract at the home of his Tri-City Americans billet family on March 10, 2007, and as a youngster with plaques he won while playing minor hockey in British Columbia.

“I was driving to Kamloops (B.C.) at the time,” he said. “My grandmother had broken her leg, and my mind wasn’t present when they called me. I was excited, but my thoughts were also in other places.”

On Monday, Price will very much be in a Hall of Fame frame of mind, his acceptance speech fashioned to thank family, friends, coaches, teammates and mentors for the roles they have played in his life and career.

He’s been gathering his thoughts since the June election announcement, then a July retirement party in Wyoming -- and perhaps a little before that, when he realized in April 2022 that his body no longer could stand the rigors of NHL goaltending.

Carey Price poses for a portrait in Toronto during 2023 Hockey Hall of Fame Weekend.

“I got to invite a lot of people who had helped me with my career, maybe 100 or so, to my party in Wyoming, and that was a lot of fun,” he said. “There was a bit of reflection there. I imagine there will be a decent handful of folks who will want to tag along (to Toronto) for the (induction) experience.”

Price hasn’t been to the Hall of Fame since November 2024, when he attended the induction of former Canadiens and Nashville Predators captain Shea Weber. He suggests that receiving his Hall of Fame ring this weekend in the shrine’s Esso Great Hall, and seeing his plaque displayed with every other Hall of Famer, “will be surreal.”

The only thing missing from his sterling body of work is the Stanley Cup, his career having seen him with virtually everything else.

Carey Price in the Montreal Canadiens dressing room with Michel Plante, son of late goalie Jacques Plante, in March 2019. With his 315th regular-season win, Price passed Plante for the Canadiens’ all-time lead for victories by a goalie. He’s holding a Plante action figure, Michel Plante holding a replica of the mask his father famously wore into a game for the first time on Nov. 1, 1959.

Historically, Price swept four trophies after a career-defining 2014-15 season, his record of 44-16-6, nine shutouts, 1.96 goals-against and .933 save percentage rewarded with the Hart as NHL MVP; Vezina as best goalie; Ted Lindsay Award as most outstanding player voted by NHLPA members; and the Williams M. Jennings for the League’s lowest goals-against, shared with Corey Crawford of the Chicago Blackhawks.

Miniatures of all four trophies were sent to his Kelowna home, the net atop the Vezina damaged in transit. It speaks to Price’s personality that rather than request a replacement, he cut the felt off the bottom of the trophy and bolted the net back on with a screwdriver. This is a man who has country dust in his veins, to whom a perfect day is one spent on horseback, or spinning a wrench on a tractor.

“Everybody wants to try to be the best,” he said at the start of training camp for the 2015-16 season, his trophy case bulging by then. “It was definitely rewarding and something that when I’m done playing I’ll reflect on. But I’d like to try to do it again and like to win more things. It’s just the nature of being an athlete.”

Carey Price poses for a photo after having given his jersey to a young fan following the Canadiens’ Bell Centre game against the Florida Panthers on April 29, 2022. It would be the final game of Price’s career.

Price would come within three victories of the elusive Stanley Cup in a 2021 Final that was won in five games by the Tampa Bay Lightning, the last of many career highlights on his road to the Hall of Fame.

“Our run to the Final was a lot of fun, that’ll always be very memorable,” he said, considering a few summits that stand out. “Then obviously 2014 -- that team we had a lot of fun on and off the ice. It was one of those years when everything seemed to go right all year round. We had such a fun team, they were all committed to playing really good defense, we had a great group of guys. That year probably is right up there.”
 
Price’s 361 regular-season victories are the most of any Canadiens goalie, 47 more than the late Hall of Fame legend Jacques Plante, whom he passed on March 12, 2019. Games played (712) and started (700) also lead Plante; his saves (19,304) and shots against (21,059) lead Hall of Famer Patrick Roy. Forty-nine shutouts rank him third behind early-era star George Hainsworth (75) and Plante (58).

Carey Price skates during introductions for the Honda NHL Superskills, part of the 2011 NHL All-Star Weekend at RBC Center in Raleigh, North Carolina.

He finished his NHL career with a record of 361-261-79, a 2.51 goals-against average, .917 save percentage and 49 shutouts. In the playoffs: 43-45, 2.39, .919, eight shutouts.

Selected by the Canadiens with the No. 5 pick in the 2005 NHL Draft from the Western Hockey League’s Tri-City Americans, Price would put a strong footprint on hockey in Montreal following a run of dazzling junior and minor-pro accomplishments.

The native of Anahim Lake, B.C., had arrived with Tri-City from Williams Lake, B.C., the Americans’ first-round pick (No. 7) in the 2002 WHL bantam draft. Then and now fiercely proud of his First Nations roots, his career took flight with a silver-medal win for Canada at the 2005 Under-18 tournament, then gold at the 2007 World Junior Championship, named most valuable player and best goalie with that event’s best goals-against (1.14) and save percentage (.961).

Price turned pro on March 10, 2007, signing his first Canadiens contract in the Pasco, Washington, home of Dennis and Jill Williams, his Tri-City billet family. 

“It seems like yesterday and a hundred years ago since I signed that contract,” he said.

Carey Price holds a replica of Jacques Plante’s famous 1959 mask, standing beside a portrait of Canadiens legend Maurice Richard and the team’s ceremonial torch, just outside the team’s Bell Centre dressing room.

Price would win the American Hockey League’s 2007 Calder Cup championship with the Canadiens’ affiliate Hamilton Bulldogs, named MVP of the playoffs, then make his NHL debut successfully against the Pittsburgh Penguins that fall.

He split his time in 2007-08 between Montreal and Hamilton, then arrived in the NHL for good in 2008, going on to win 2014 Olympic gold for Canada in Sochi, Russia, named the tournament’s best goalie with a record of 5-0, a 0.59 goals-against-average, a .972 save percentage and two shutouts.

In 2016, Price anchored Canada to the World Cup of Hockey title, going 5-0 with a 1.40 average, .957 save percentage and a shutout.

He thrived on work in Montreal, at 6-foot-3 and 217 pounds a huge presence in the net whose work often seemed effortless with his superb positioning. In hindsight, his heavy workload probably did his body no favors.

Carey Price with 2016 World Cup of Hockey trophy, which he won with Team Canada, and with fellow goalies Mike Smith (l.) and Roberto Luongo (r.) after Canada had been awarded the gold medal at the 2014 Sochi Olympic Winter Games.

Price was sidelined by various injuries throughout his career but rebounded each time to return to action, awarded the 2022 Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy for perseverance and dedication to the sport.

He was voted the Masterton having played just five games, all in the final two weeks of 2021-22, the entire year battling to recover from knee surgery performed the previous summer in New York.

In cleaning up torn meniscus, a surgeon discovered an osteochondral defect; that is, shock-absorbing cartilage had worn completely off the femoral condyle, likely from wear and tear and repeated trauma, leaving Price’s well-worn joint almost bone on bone.

Specialists in Pittsburgh subsequently proposed the idea of an additional procedure, removing cartilage and bone from part of the knee and transplanting it in the injured portion. Price chose not to go that route given that the surgery didn’t guarantee a solution, lengthy rehabilitation would likely cost him a full season, and the operation could negatively impact his avid outdoors lifestyle after hockey.

So he worked through the 2021-22 season trying to strengthen a knee that no longer was suited to goaltending.

Carey Price poses with Canadiens general manager Bob Gainey (l.) and director of player personnel Trevor Timmins after being selected No. 5 in the 2005 NHL Draft in Ottawa.

“It was tough,” Price said in 2023 about those five games that would be the last of his career, four at home and one on the road. “I’d spent the better part of that year trying to get ready to play again but it just felt like there was something off. Every time I tried a very slow, calculated return, it was like baby steps. 

“We did that like three or four times to return to play. By the time I got all ramped up to get ready for full-on goaltending, the knee would just swell up. It would get so swollen that I couldn't do the things that I know I have to do to play the position right and play it well. 

“It’s always been my character to just suck it up and get through it. I knew I was going to play those (five) games regardless. But in the back of my mind, I also knew this wasn't something that I could maintain for a whole season.”

In September 2025, in the eighth and final year of his contract, he was traded in purely a salary-cap move to the San Jose Sharks with a draft pick, in exchange for prospect Gannon Laroque. He jokes that there’s not been on a run on Price-nameplated Sharks jerseys.

Carey Price stands with Patrick Roy during a ceremony to retire Roy’s Canadiens No. 33 on Nov. 22, 2008 at Bell Centre in Montreal.

The night after his induction, Price and his family will be on Bell Centre ice in Montreal, the Canadiens paying tribute to a cornerstone of his teams. His name will be added to the Ring of Honor at the top of the arena bowl, with every other Hall of Fame player and builder. 

Price will be joined for what promises to be an energetic celebration by his wife, Angela, and the couple’s three children – daughters Liv, 10, and Millie, 7, and son Lincoln, 6. In March 2019, he and his wife and their two daughters were at center ice, celebrated for his 315th regular-season career win that pushed him past Jacques Plante for the team’s all-time lead.

Price’s portrait will be added alongside the legends in the dressing room of Bell Centre, and at the team’s suburban training rink.

He thinks especially of the goaltenders who wore the Canadiens’ CH crest before him, especially Patrick Roy, who won the Stanley Cup in 1986 and 1993 before winning two more with the Colorado Avalanche in 1996 and 2001.

Carey Price with Team Canada at the 2007 IIHF World Junior Championship in Finland.

“I had ‘Patty’ looking over my shoulder every day, he was right up behind me every day,” Price said of Roy’s portrait.

In fact, in his final few seasons, Price sat beneath a gallery that featured Hainsworth, who arrived in Montreal a century ago this year to replace the late Georges Vezina. But a decade earlier, before the rooms were renovated, it was indeed Roy who was gazing down, and it is the latter whom he remembers best overhead.

“It’s unique,” Price said of the Canadiens’ dressing room. “To my recollection, I don’t remember seeing a roomful of Hall of Famers watching over the boys as they get ready to play. Even the names of all the players who have played on teams past (on plaques), it’s pretty cool to go through that.”

There might be a future in hockey, but for now Price’s focus is entirely on his young family.

“Now that I’m not playing I might be able to get involved a little more,” he said. “But I want to be here and available to my family now as much as I can be. This period of my life, and their lives, is so short, it goes by so quickly. I’m definitely interested in being a part of the development of the next generation of Canadiens’ torch-bearers. Being a goalie consultant might be interesting to me, but I’ll cross that bridge when the time is right.”

Carey Price settles in to sign autographs for a huge crowd of fans at the Sport Card Expo in Toronto during 2023 Hockey Hall of Fame Weekend.

Today, Price is taking a little more time to look into his rear-view mirror.

“First and foremost, I'm just really grateful for the opportunity that I had to play the game at the level that I did,” he said in 2023. “I guess I learned that I'm pretty resilient. I spent basically half of my life in Montreal. I grew up there. The city is always going to be a big part of my life.

“Looking back at it, a kid from Anahim Lake, it’s a long way from there to the NHL. To have a successful 15-year career, I’m just really thankful for the opportunity.

“If I could do it all over again, I would,” he said. “Just about all the veterans I’ve played with have said, ‘It goes by fast, it goes by fast…’ but when you're in it, you don't think about it. Especially me. I’ve always thought, ‘This is what I’ve got to do now. This is what I'm focused on.’ I went through my career never envisioning an end. I wish that maybe I’d soaked it in a little more along the way.”

Top photo: Carey Price with his wife, Angela, and their children Liv (l.), Millie and Lincoln. The family posed in Wyoming in July 2026 during a retirement party for the goalie.