Admittedly a little click bait-ish, but more of an intriguing thought for one impending trade.
The Montreal Canadiens need to trade Carey Price. The goalie hasn’t played since the 2021-22 season and has a knee issue that retired him. Price’s contract goes through this season, and it would be better-served for the Habs to clear him off the books. They have to pay a big bonus in September, then it should be time to trade him.
Turns out that day was yesterday, September 1.
The Penguins love to get “something for nothing” these days, and adding Price’s $10.5 million cap hit while paying him little actual money certainly qualifies. Following that $5.5 million bonus that the Habs paid yesterday, Price is due $2.0 million in real money over the course of the 2025-26 season, yet he also is attached with a whopping $10.5 million cap hit.
That imbalance and hefty cap hit presents a problem for Montreal. Keeping Price would mean dipping into long-term injured reserve, an oft misunderstood topic of NHL salary cap management. LTIR is not a comfortable or preferable place for any team to be, even one that can easily afford it like Montreal. Under this system, it would be much better for the Habs, who made the playoffs last season as they take steps forward in their rebuild turning into a regular contender, to drop Price’s contract. That would allow them to be under the salary cap and use the added space to accrue even more space by next trade deadline for them to exploit.
We haven’t had a good “retired played traded to a random team in a while” — it’s akin to the Arizona Coyotes adding such players like Chris Pronger, Pavel Datsyuk and Marian Hossa — even though all were retired and never even reported to town. Other teams have done it too, Florida picked up Marc Savard’s contract in 2016, Nathan Horton was added to Toronto, Ryan Clowe to San Jose.
From the recent rumors, it seems like San Jose has the recent inside track to acquire Price’s cap hit. The Sharks have $29 million in cap space, compared to $13 million for the Pens. San Jose, in fact, is projected to be under the salary cap floor of $70.6 million (they have $66.1 on the books), so either through trades or free agency it looks like they will have to add somewhere to their payroll, making Price an extra juicy target for them.
For the Pens, acquiring Price would push them up towards the upper limit but still comfortably under the salary cap. Such a move also offers the flexibility to move as many veterans as they wanted without bringing back any cap hits in return and remaining cap compliant.
Would the price (lower case p, intentionally) be worth it as a dumping ground for a bad contract? That depends on the return, but it might be lower than you think. While Florida did gain a second round pick in 2016 for taking on Savard’s deal, in 2018 the Sharks added Clowe for little return, their benefit was getting up to the cap floor for free. The rest of the returns have landed somewhere in the middle of that range, Arizona got a third round pick in exchange for adding Hossa’s contract, and the Coyotes got a better first round draft pick in exchange for taking on Datsyuk. Arizona got a free player (albeit a limited one) in Nicklas Grossmann as their benefit for taking on the Pronger deal.
So, probably don’t expect the Penguins to walk away with a huge return if they do agree to take on Price. The deal will be structured and focused mostly on Montreal getting to drop a contract more than anything. If the reports are accurate that they have a couple of options of teams willing to take on the deal, then presumably the price will be driven down to a low benefit. Picking up Price makes the most sense on paper for a team like the Sharks who need to get up to the cap floor anyways, but Kyle Dubas and the Pens have been using their cap space for a while now to their advantage to get a litte “something for nothing” type of transactions. The opportunity for that is on the table with Carey Price, but beyond being a notable trivia line about what team he technically “ended up on” at the end of his contract, the upcoming trade probably isn’t going to have much bigger ramifications for the team that makes it.
