Three years and a few days ago, the Montreal Canadiens fans were waking up and pinching themselves to check if they weren’t having a nightmare of if their team had lost the Stanley Cup. They didn’t know that in the end, they would lose much more than that because of that unexpected Cup run.
The First Hint
Shortly after the Canadiens fell short in the Stanley Cup final, the Seattle Kraken expansion draft was held. Two names shone brightly on Montreal’s unprotected list: franchise goaltender Carey Price and team captain Shea Weber.
From the outside, leaving them unprotected was a big risk, but for Marc Bergevin it wasn’t. Both players had enormous contracts, and both were severely damaged health-wise. Furthermore, Price had told the team to leave him unprotected to allow Montreal to keep hold of backup goaltender, Jack Allen.
In the end, blueliner Cale Fleury was picked by the Seattle outfit, but that didn’t mean much considering what the future held.
The Captain Had Lost His Last Battle
Less than 24 hours after the expansion draft, Bergevin told the media that Weber might have played his last game in the NHL. The numerous injuries he had suffered over the years had finally broken down his resolve.
Even those who were mad when Bergevin traded P.K. Subban to the Nashville Predators to get Weber will admit that the newly minted Hall of Famer was quite a soldier and battled through pretty much everything.
Unfortunately, there comes a time when an athlete has to start thinking about their life after hockey and that’s exactly what Weber did. It’s bad enough when a professional athlete has to stop playing, but it’s even worse when he’s physically diminished in a way that prevents them from enjoying life.
Nobody could blame Weber, for his decision but his bowing out threw a spanner in the works for Bergevin who built his team from the net out with Price and Weber as the two foundation pieces.
Price Kept on Trying
As for goaltender Carey Price, he didn’t bow out as soon, he still wanted to play and was ready to do what was needed to achieve his goal. Before he could keep chasing his Stanley Cup dream, however, he needed to get himself in the right place physically and mentally. It’s with that in mind that he entered the NHLPA’s Player Assistance Program in October.
In early November, when he exited the program and issued a statement, he admitted he had to ask for help because of years of neglect for his mental health which had resulted in substance abuse. While he was out of the program, he still had to rehab the knee on which he had surgery on July 21, 2022 and a return looked possible but not likely in the short-term at least.
He would spend most of the season trying to get healthy and when he returned at the tail end of the season, he took part in five final games and didn’t look like himself in the net. When you see such a competitive goalie wave to his family on the ice while play hasn’t been blown dead, you know it’s time for farewells.
Thankfully, he was able to go out on a high when he signed one last win in a 10-2 contest against the Florida Panters’ C (or D) team. In the Canadiens’ end-of-season presser, Price told the media the current state of his knee would not allow him to play a season with a normal workload and nobody was shocked when he sat out the following season.
It wasn’t until September 2023 that Price pulled the plug on his career, but some fans had known it was over for some time. Of course, he hasn’t retired officially yet since his contract has not expired, but next Summer, he’ll be admissible for induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame just like Weber was this year as he won’t have played for three years.
Their Departure Led to a New Style
Do not think I’ve forgotten about Paul Byron, he almost made the article too, but since he played 27 games the season after the Cup final, I figured it didn’t end his career. While fans weren’t happy to see two huge pieces of their core go, it will have been for the best in the end. When Kent Hughes was hired to replace Bergevin, he said that in an ideal world, his Canadiens would be fast and offense-minded, an expression fans hadn’t heard about the Tricolore since when? Their dominant decade in the 1970s?
Of course, fans enjoyed the multiple saves Price made throughout his career and Weber’s rough style of play, but it’s goals that win games. The Habs’ faithful have been starved for goals for so long that when they realized a rebuild was coming, they let out sighs of satisfaction. As every season brings the Canadiens closer to the end of the rebuild, things are about to get very interesting in Montreal once again….at last.
