The 2005 NHL Entry Draft was held in Ottawa on July 30th, 2005. Four picks after the Pittsburgh Penguins selected Sidney Crosby, the Canadiens' management group walked up to the podium.

"Le Club de Hockey Canadien est fier de selectionner—the Montreal Canadiens are proud to select, from the WHL Tri-City Americans, goaltender Carey Price." - Trevor Timmins "Oh man, this is right off the reservation. [...] There’s nothing wrong with Carey Price’s athleticism, and he’s a great handler of the puck, he’s technically sound and he’s a big body presence and all that in goal. But you think about Jose Theodore, Cristobal Huet, they traded Mathieu Garon, they have Yann Danis signed as an unrestricted free agent coming out of Brown University. This is not a fit for Montreal! They’re very unproven on defense, they just bought out Patrice Brisebois, they don’t have a big-body presence down the middle at centre—yes, they have Radek Bonk, who they got in the Garon trade; that’s a huge price they paid to get Bonk—I don’t know about this fit at all for Montreal. They had so many other needs." - Pierre McGuire

Professional athletes are numbers. Statistics. Dollar amounts. Men and women whose contributions can be broken down into columns, grids, charts. You can watch them progress and regress through their careers like a giant, branching muscular body breathing in and out, thousands and thousands of little bodies working toward different aims.

Some of them are trying to make the team. Some of them are trying to secure a raise. Some of them are trying to outshine a rival, outdo an idol, shut up the naysayers in their heads. Some of them are trying to win it all.

It’s hard to look at Carey Price and see him as a series of numbers, though. Maybe it’s because whatever you do with the numbers he’s been generating the last year and a half, he seems to come back on top. And when you’re first across the board, numbers stop being enough. You need words that border on poetry to describe the gulf that Price opens up between himself and his competitors. But it wasn’t always this way.

In the spring of 2008, after a strong rookie season and a first-round defeat of the hated Boston Bruins, the Habs fell flat against the Flyers in the second round, and Price’s reputation as a golden boy began its long, low slouch through the mud of Montreal, that brown sludge that accumulates and multiplies in the winter, when the boots of a city full of goalie coaches and post game analysts trudge and trudge and beat to death the frozen horse that is the Habs.

The struggles extended for two seasons, during which he went 36-36-15 in the regular season and 0-5, often an afterthought to Jaroslav Halak, reaching their apex in a post-elimination press conference in 2009 that felt like a defining moment for Price:

"A lot of fans, people I’ve talked to, including my own wife, have said, ‘Why do you continually stick by Carey Price?’ ‘What is the, you know… Why does he keep putting Carey Price out there?’ is the question I’m asked. Well you know, because everybody’s saying, ‘Well, Halak… why not put him in?’ But what is there about Carey Price that you seem to be so ready to defend all the time?" - Reporter "Well, I think Carey Price is a thoroughbred. And your wife may not recognize it, but I don’t bake bread very well either, so, you know, we each have our expertise. And Carey Price, I made a decision on Carey Price a year ago which put him in a position to gain experience. He got into a starting role at a very young age so that he could accelerate the number of games that he could play, so that he could accelerate the number of rich experience games that he could play in and at 21 years old I think he’s doing pretty darn well. And besides that, I think he plays pretty good. He’s a good goalie. And if I was playing against him, I would think, ‘Man, that’s a good goalie. Look at him, the way he plays.’ That’s why. Could you pass that on to your wife?" - Bob Gainey

Gainey’s sexist crack notwithstanding, his comments were apt. For years, that was all that Price was: the promise of a thoroughbred, who disappointed on the big stage despite glimmers of hope; who had all the tools at his disposal, but couldn’t put everything together.

But since the Canadiens traded Jaroslav Halak to the St. Louis Blues for Lars Eller and Ian Schultz, Price has turned into one of the best (and steadiest) goalies in the league. His 163 wins over that span are second only to Marc-Andre Fleury’s 174. His .923 save percentage puts him in the same stratosphere as Rask, Lundqvist and Schneider. Only six goalies have more than his 18 playoff wins over that stretch.





But let's just take a second to list all the things Carey Price has won since he was drafted in 2005: In 2007, World Junior gold with Canada, plus tournament MVP. Plus the Del Wilson Trophy for best goaltender in the WHL, as well as the overall CHL Goaltender of the Year Award. And, after a call-up to the big leagues, the Calder Cup in the AHL. And the Calder Cup MVP, the Jack A. Butterfield Trophy.

In 2008, he made the NHL All-Rookie Team. He played in the NHL All-Star game in 2009, 2011 and 2012. In 2014 he won Olympic gold with Canada and was voted best goaltender of the tournament. In 2015 he played in the NHL All-Star game, shared the William M. Jennings Trophy, won the Hart, Vezina and Ted Lindsay Trophies and was named to the First All-Star Team.

At this point in his career, the list of trophies and honours he has never won for leagues and tournaments he’s played in is actually shorter: At the junior level, he never won the Memorial Cup, the Stafford Smythe Memorial Trophy for Memorial Cup MVP, or the Hap Emms Memorial Trophy as the Memorial Cup’s best goaltender. He never won any individual regular season awards in the AHL. He didn’t win the Calder Trophy as NHL rookie of the year, nor has he ever been named to the NHL Second-Team All-Star, or All-Star Game MVP. Teemu Selanne beat him out for overall Olympics MVP in 2014. And, of course, he’s never won the Stanley Cup or the Conn Smythe Trophy.

But give him some time. He’s a thoroughbred.

"Carey, Carey, did you think that you could stop that puck?" - Reporter "Yeah. I feel like I can stop every puck." - Carey Price, 2015

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