Ken Dryden was in attendance at Serge Savard's annual golf tournament this week and Carey Price gets his vote for the rafters.
Ken Dryden was in attendance at Serge Savard's annual golf tournament this week and Carey Price gets his vote for the rafters.
Every year Montreal Canadiens alumni and former GM Serge Savard holds a golf tournament at Le Mirage, a golf course in Terrebonne. This sixth edition was once again held for the Sherbrooke University's student athlete program, over the course of the four previous editions, over $2 M have been donated to athletes.
This year, the 14 surviving players of the team that won four Stanley Cups from 1975 to 1979 were in attendance on top of the man at the helm of the team back then, Scotty Bowman. It was no easy task to track them all down according to Savard who ended up finding Rick Chartraw down under, the Venezuela born former first-round pick now lives in Australia.
As always, former players had to field various questions from members of the media and Ken Dryden was asked a particularly easy one, whether he believed Carey Price's number 31 deserves to go up to the rafters. According to RDS he replied:
I don't want to say too much, because I'm not the one who gets to make the decision, but for me, the answer is obvious. He was an excellent goaltender.
We've heard and read about this question time and time again since it became evident that Price would never play again and while everyone is entitled to their opinion, the phrase "It takes one to know one" comes to mind here.
There are those who say Price shouldn't get to the rafters since he hasn't won a Stanley Cup, but that's too hard a criteria nowadays. The Canadiens didn't win their 24 Cups when there were 32 teams in the league, their odds of winning were much better than they can be today.
While it's true that Price never got to hoist the Cup, he still took a team that had no business being in the final on his back and dragged it there against all odds. Yes, he came up short, but winning the Stanley Cup shouldn't be the one and only criteria to decide if someone was important enough to the franchise to be immortalized in the rafters.
No goaltender won more games wearing the Tricolore than Carey Price. He signed 361 wins during his career, Jacques Plante comes second with 314 and Patrick Roy is third with 289.
In an otherwise dark era for the Canadiens and their fans alike, Price was the shinning light in the Bell Centre, the one player who always made them cheer. Even in defeat, Price was the reason why Montreal wasn't too severely beaten up. He made crossing the desert bearable for the offense starved fans.
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