Montreal Canadiens: Carey Price joins elite company with 300th win
Carey Price continues to improve his legacy with the Montreal Canadiens after becoming just the second goalie in franchise history to reach the 300 win plateau.
When one looks at the Montreal Canadiens record book, you see goaltender Carey Price‘s name in there quite a bit. He’s already their franchise leader in games played, losses, shots faced, and saves. Of course, Price also has a Vezina Trophy and Hart Trophy on his resume.
Now he has officially become the member of a very elite club. On Thursday night against the Arizona Coyotes, Price picked up his 300th win. He’s just the second goalie in Canadiens history to reach the milestone and trails only Jacques Plante (314 wins).
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Price is just the 35th goalie in NHL history and the seventh active goalie to reach the plateau. Roberto Luongo, Henrik Lundqvist, Marc-Andre Fleury, Ryan Miller, Pekka Rinne, and Cam Ward are the others. Keri Lehtonen reached it last season but isn’t currently playing for an NHL team.
He has shown a lot of resilience in reaching 300 wins. Price seemed all but ensured of reaching the milestone after his 2014-15 season, which saw him get both the Vezina Trophy and the Hart Trophy. However, an unfortunate injury (and re-injury) during the 2015-16 season took a lot out of him.
Lower body injuries are quite difficult for goalies to bounce back from and they can haunt their careers. Price hasn’t been quite as good as he was before the 2015-16 since then, but you’ve got to give him credit for fighting through his struggles. Hopefully, a younger, faster Canadiens squad can help him get back to his dominant days.
Is He A Hall Of Famer?
This is a difficult question. The Hockey Hall of Fame is quite inconsistent when it comes to evaluating goaltenders (though this could be said for all hockey fans). Grant Fuhr is a Hall of Fame goaltender, but somehow Curtis Joseph isn’t.
That said, Price has some things going for him. He had a number of extremely impressive dominant years. Now, whether or not Price had enough prime years to warrant election is up for debate. But at the very least, his best years should get him in the discussion.
Price should be boosted by his Hart Trophy and Vezina Trophy season. That’s a very rare accomplishment. It’s not everything, as Jose Theodore found out firsthand.
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But when you put it in context with Price’s numbers and his international dominance, Price is at least a “maybe”. Playing for the Canadiens certainly won’t hurt his cause, especially since he’ll almost indefinitely retire with most of their goaltending records.