Carey Price and his family were preparing to join the Seattle Kraken
Anthony Scultore
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When it was learned that Carey Price was going to waive his no-move clause in order to be exposed to the Seattle Kraken expansion draft, it came as a shock.
His reasons for doing so were twofold. First, he was dealing with an injury that required surgery which he had on July 23. Secondly, he wanted to protect the Canadiens from losing Jake Allen. It was rumored that Ron Francis was eyeing him, that would’ve left Montreal in a pickle in goal.
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Inside Carey Price’s decision to waive
The 33 year-old goalie’s wife has her own blog called By Angela. In a recent post, she detailed the thought process behind Carey’s decision to waive his no-move clause.
Coming right off of playoffs, we began to wrap our minds around Carey’s injury and the need for surgery, so the decision was made to leave Carey unprotected during the expansion draft. Really, there was no other option. With the unknown result of Carey’s surgery and recovery time we couldn’t risk losing Jake — the back up goalie, who Seattle would have taken, for sure. I was not stressed about it at all — because of Carey’s contract, his age and his injury Seattle wouldn’t even give him a second glance . . . or so we thought.
Angela Price
She goes on to lament the fact that news of Carey waiving prior to it being known he had to have surgery bothered her. It was the primary reason for doing so, but some fans in Montreal thought he may have wanted to be closer to home in British Columbia. “It hurt my heart to read that people thought we wanted out of Montreal,” Angela explained.
The Price’s started to prepare as if they were going to Seattle
After the decision was made and it became known that Carey needed surgery, they really didn’t think Seattle would consider selecting him. They even weighed his age and contract of $10.5M AAV for the next five seasons into their calculations for making the move to waive.
Yet there was a lot of talk that Seattle was closely at take Price.
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.
Angela Price
As the news cycles churned, the possibility started to become so real that Angela was preparing for a move. “I was hyping it up in my head to a point where I began to think ‘heck, why wouldn’t we want to go to Seattle?’”
Their hearts are in Montreal
Angela detailed what was going through their minds on the day of the Expansion Draft. At one point they even discussed what to do if he was chosen by Ron Francis.
I looked at Carey in shock and said you can’t go to the draft party and put on a Kraken jersey, parading around in front of everyone! How disrespectful to all the Habs fans and that franchise! 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.
Angela Price
Ultimately, the Kraken took Cale Fleury and Price was still a member of the Habs. In the end, Angela made her feelings very clear. “Our heart, my heart is with the Canadiens organization,” she concluded.
