Goalies across the NHL grew up wanting to play the position as close to the way the 35-year-old has played for the Montreal Canadiens since making his NHL debut during the 2007-08 season.
“He was the gold standard of goaltending from when he came into the League until his Stanley Cup (Final) run (in 2021),” said Jake Allen, who played the past two seasons with Price in Montreal. “He was a role model for probably 85 percent of the goalies that started out during that era, especially in Canada. He was the goaltender of our country. Everyone wanted to be Carey Price. So his impact will be felt for many, many years. to come.”
Carter Hart puts himself at the top of that list of goalies who wanted to play like Price.
The Philadelphia Flyers No. 1 goalie was 9 years old and just starting at the position when the 20-year-old Price played his first NHL season.
Hart has the magazines he collected featuring the Canadiens rookie stored safely at his parents’ house in Sherwood Park, Alberta, and remembers bugging his father to make sure they got to the game for warmups the first time he saw Price play live.
“I think every Canadian goalie growing up followed Carey Price,” Hart said. “He was my idol and I watched everything he did, so I had to be there to watch warmups and see everything, and there were some skating drills he did that of course I started doing in my warmup before practices back in pee wee. There was just something about his game, the way he made it look so effortless and smooth, and I think because of that every young goalie growing up idolized him.”
Price hasn’t played since April 29, and an offseason of rest has not alleviated concerns about a painful, chronic knee condition. He said Oct. 24 he wasn’t planning to retire but his hopes to play again after a so-far unsuccessful rehab from knee surgery in 2021 would require “that outside hope of a miracle happening.”
In the aftermath of that press conference, there has been retrospection about the career Price has authored.
For all the awards and records set during 15 seasons with the Canadiens, including the most wins (361) in the team’s storied history and winning the Hart Trophy as the most valuable player in the NHL, the Vezina Trophy as the League’s best goalie and the Ted Lindsay Award as the most outstanding player voted by the players in 2015, Price’s impact on the position itself may be even more significant.
From the way he moved and played to how he wore his equipment, Price is the most influential goalie of the past decade. Nobody moved the needle in the goalie world like the goalie from tiny Anahim Lake, British Columbia.
“He changed the way the game is played for goalies,” Hart said. “Less is more.”
That less-is-more efficiency with which Price moved around his crease became a gold standard for goalies, whether they were young like Hart or already in the NHL.
It didn’t seem to matter how fast things moved around him, Price rarely broke from his patterns, seemingly slowing the game down and forcing it to be played on his terms. Sure, there were flashy saves — windmilling gloves, head-first Superman dives, fully extended stick paddles and Dominik Hasek-like barrel rolls — from time to time, as required. But Price’s calling card is his ability to beat plays to position, arriving set and square to casually smother seemingly glorious scoring chances in that Canadiens logo on his chest.
“When I first saw him play at World Junior [Championship in 2007] it was the first time I’d seen a goalie play that calm and smooth and it was like, ‘How is he doing it? How is he playing the position so much better than everybody else already?'” said the Buffalo Sabers goalie Eric Comrie, who was 11 at the time. “It just looked so calm, and he was so much better than everybody else at that time. Even then I remember thinking, ‘This is the best goalie I’ve ever seen in my life,’ and, ‘This is the guy I want to play like.’ And I think every kid growing up said, ‘I want to play like Carey Price,’ because he looked so smooth and effortless, and he was always in position. He was the best goalie in the world year after year after year.”
It wasn’t just the up-and-coming kids who wanted to play like Price. Several established NHL goalies, asked what skill from another goalie they would like to see under their Christmas tree for a 2016 edition of Unmasked, chose Price’s movement in the crease.
“I immediately go to Price’s skating,” said Devan Dubnyk, who was leading the NHL in goals-against average, save percentage and shutouts at the time. “If you are as fluid and quick as he is and always there and set, everything goes from there. Price pushes and stops and he’s set like he’s floating out there.”
Curtis McElhinney, who retired last season, called Price’s movement effortless.
“It looks so calm, almost nonchalant,” McElhinney said. “But if he needs to get there faster, it’s there without a second of hesitation.”
Price’s impact on the position didn’t end with his movement — or at the Canadian border.
Pittsburgh Penguins goalie Casey DeSmith is from New Hampshire, but he said Price influenced him more than any other goalie. Part of that might be growing up in a family of Canadiens fans, but most of it was how Price played.
“He had everything: flawless technique, quickness, read the shot well, great reactions,” DeSmith said. “When you look at how the game is played now from a goaltending position, so much of it can be traced back to Price.
“The best goalies in the world now, they move like he moved. Everything is clean, hands are quiet, no holes.”
Even Price’s equipment sparked imitation in the goalie community.
CCM launched an entire line around Price’s preferences in 2013, and some of the innovations and subtle tweaks he added through the years have since become staples for other goalies.
Price introduced the running of the elastic knee strap down to the outside of his calf rather than around the knee, removing the bootstrap that connected the pad to the skate and cutting down his stick shafts to improve the puck-handling that Hart says is severely underrated. . Several stick companies are offering shortened models at retail, a nod to the widespread change initiated by Price.
Each is another example of how his impact will continue to be felt in the NHL even if he never makes it all the way back.
How Price played will always be the biggest legacy.
“His skating was phenomenal, just so smooth, efficient and calm,” Hart said. “He never overslid or overpushed or made things harder than they were. Carey just made things look so easy, and for us as goalies, that’s how we want to play.”
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