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Carey Price is the elephant in the room.

There has been an enormous amount of discussion since the end of the Montreal Canadiens’ disastrous season about how the team will fare as of October, and it goes without saying that many of us don’t share Geoff Molson and Marc Bergevin’s enthusiasm about this squad. Maybe they’ll have a better attitude next season — whatever the heck that means — but most of the chatter has focused on the fact that there simply isn’t all that much A-list talent there, either up front or on the blue line.

Management says Les Boys will be better, but the only “major” addition, if you can call it that, is the arrival of Max Domi and his nine-goal pedigree. Add the fact that Shea Weber is out recovering from knee surgery until at least mid-December and you have what appears to be a pretty dire scenario.

But the weird thing is that almost no one is talking about the Habs’ most important player — Price. The fellow who used to be considered the world’s best goalie had his worst season, by any definition, in 2017-18. He ranked 47th — that’s not a typo — in terms of save percentage and was No. 35 in the NHL in wins.

My colleague Marc Dumont, who understands hockey number-crunching much better than I do, argued in a column in late May that the real stat to look at with goalies is a metric called Goals Saved Above Average. If a goalie’s in the negative in terms of GSAA, he’s not doing well. Price ended the season with the league’s second-worst GSAA.

Short version? He was bad. So the US$84-million question — that’s the price tag of his eight-year contract, which kicks in next season — is this: Will he bounce back in the fall? Dumont argues that “all signs point to Price bouncing back” but with all due respect to a columnist I admire, the jury is out on that one. Maybe he’ll bounce back or maybe he won’t.