The Montreal Canadiens shocked a lot of hockey fans when they chose to protect goaltender Jake Allen and leave Carey Price exposed in the Seattle Kraken expansion draft last month. And while the Kraken ultimately selected defenceman Cale Fleury from Montreal instead, Price's wife Angela says she was mentally preparing for Seattle to choose her husband.
Angela Price detailed her expansion draft experience in a recent blog post on her website. In the post, she explained that she was opposed to the decision to waive Price's no-movement clause for the draft. But, at the same time, she said the decision had to be made to protect Allen due to injury concerns with her husband. Carey Price would later have knee surgery in late July and is expected to be ready for the start of training camp, a fact that wasn't known yet while their family's fate hung in the balance.
"It hurt my heart to read that people thought we wanted out of Montreal. I was so thankful when it came out the next day that Carey was going to need surgery, but at the same time Carey’s agent was calling to say that Seattle didn’t seem too concerned about his injury and him being picked up could really happen," Angela Price wrote. "So naturally, I spent the next couple of days living on Twitter, reading every little thing and over thinking it all. It definitely got to a point where I thought we were for sure headed to Seattle, so I let myself start mentally preparing for it and even talking about it. Just in case it did happen."
Price goes on to explain that moving to Seattle wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world for her family. She herself grew up in Washington state and still has lots of friends and family there. Still, the Canadiens are the only team her family has ever known and leaving them would have been extremely difficult.
"We continued to discuss how, at the end of the day, it is a business and players get traded away all the time. I understood that, but it still didn’t feel right," she wrote. "I couldn’t wrap my mind around Carey doing that. It was then that I realized although playing in Seattle would make our lives so much easier, our heart, my heart is with the Canadiens organization."
Now that the expansion draft has come and gone, the Price family can begin to prepare for next season with the comfort of knowing they are staying put. Coming off an appearance in the Stanley Cup Final and with the additions of Mike Hoffman and David Savard, the team will enter camp with high expectations. Having Price in the net is a big part of that and it's something that the Price family — and Canadiens fans everywhere — hope will remain the case for a long time yet.
"With your world dependent on what seemed like a game of chicken was bizarre and something I hope to never experience again," Angela Price wrote. "I really feel for those families who experience it once or multiple times throughout their guys’ career."
