The Canadiens may be able to place Carey Price’s contract on the long-term injured list, but it’s clear that trading him would be the simplest way to gain some breathing room.
Whether it’s to have more breathing room during the summer, or to avoid having to systematically defer bonuses for the club’s young players from year to year, trading him is an option.
In my opinion, John Sedgwick would be happy to have the contract off his hands.
We know that this summer, Kent Hughes will be on the case. He’ll try to trade the last year of Carey Price’s contract (who won’t object despite his no-trade clause if it’ll help the Canadiens… because it won’t change his day-to-day life) this summer.
Will he make it? We don’t know yet.
After all, there is one game-changing factor. According to Nicolas Cloutier, the signing bonus Carey Price is due to receive ($5.5 million) will not be paid on July 1, but on September 1.
He talked about this in an article on the TVA Sports website. Renaud Lavoie reported on the matter.
2 choses concernant le contrat de Price.
— Nicolas Cloutier (@NCloutierTVA) May 15, 2025
Le dernier boni à la signature sera versé le 1er septembre, et non le 1er juillet.
On a de bonnes raisons de croire qu'un bon % de son salaire (salaire de base + boni) est couvert par les assurances https://t.co/T1yo1bIcik
In concrete terms, this means that even if his contract were 60% or 80% insured, going after him in July or August isn’t attractive. Why would a club go after him BEFORE the Habs pay him his bonus?
A club that would go after him after the bonus would do so because he’ll only earn $2 million in real money during the season, but has a $10.5 million impact on the payroll.
That said, if you have to pay him his bonus, it’s counterproductive. That’s the problem with the Habs and Geoff Molson right now: no other owner will take on that contract before the bonus, just for the fun of it.
Not unless they get something big in return…
But the problem is that on September 1, the teams are pretty well set. It will therefore be more difficult (but not impossible) for Kent Hughes to work with this contract in his paws during the summer and convince a GM whose budget is made for the 2025-2026 season to take him on in September.
It’s not impossible (and it can be negotiated over the summer), but it does make the matter a little more complicated than we thought.
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