‘I thought we were for sure headed to Seattle’: Kraken rumors got attention of Carey and Angela Price | Pro Sports

SEATTLE – Now that the Kraken has his own star goalkeeper in Philipp Grubauer, let’s take another trip back in time when a few weeks ago it looked like another elite goalkeeper was playing here instead.

I am, of course, talking about former Tri-City Americans goalkeeper Carey Price, whom you will remember for waiving his no-movement clause prior to the draft enlargement.

That sparked speculation across Europe about what this all meant and whether the Kraken could vote for him.

Well, it turns out the Price household was pretty much speculating too, and by the morning of the draft was on pins and needles like the rest of us.

At least that’s what Price’s wife Angela, a Kennewicker native, says, who updated her blog “By Angela” last week to include a section on her husband’s playoff run with Montreal and the resulting chaos in expansion plans.

I’ll skip their recap on how Price got his upstart Canadiens to the Stanley Cup final before losing to Tampa Bay in five games.

What happened next, according to Angela Price’s entry titled “Life Update,” was that the goalkeeper decided to undergo arthroscopic surgery to “clean up” his knee and thought it was safe to be debunked in the draft extension so the Canadians could protect the backup net reducer Jake Allen of the Kraken.

“Really, there was no other option,” she wrote. “Given the unknown outcome of Carey’s surgery and recovery time, we couldn’t risk losing Jake – the substitute goalkeeper Seattle would have surely taken. I wasn’t stressed at all – because of Carey’s contract, his age, and his injury, Seattle wouldn’t even take a second look … or so we thought. “

It was 24 hours between the announcement that her husband was unprotected and the news that he was going to have knee surgery.

This information gap sparked a speculative firestorm that Carey Price wanted to remove from Montreal because of his intense scrutiny by the hockey media.

His in-laws also live in Washington, and the couple have an off-season home in Kelowna, British Columbia.

Angela Price found this transition difficult.

“His injury was the only reason we left his no-trade and he was left unprotected,” she wrote. “It hurt my heart to read that people thought we were leaving Montreal. I was so grateful when it came out the next day that Carey needed an operation, but at the same time Carey’s agent called to say that Seattle didn’t seem too concerned about his injury and that it could really happen that he would be picked up . ”

And that’s when the Price family’s nerves really began.

Just like the rest of us, they apparently felt that he could put on an Kraken jersey at Gas Works Park on July 21st.

“Of course, I spent the next few days living on Twitter, reading every little thing and thinking about everything,” wrote Angela Price.

There’s probably a joke somewhere when a famous athlete and family scour Twitter gossip to understand a situation he created that could easily have been avoided by leaving his no-movement clause intact.

But since someone was also reduced to deciphering Twitter posts during that Sunday-to-Wednesday saga during a hockey-writing gig that I thought was serious, all I can do is empathize and save my barbs for more deserving social media Addicts.

Ultimately, the Price family wasn’t nearly as sure as some fans and experts that he would stay.

“It definitely got to a point where I thought we’d be going to Seattle for sure, so I prepared myself mentally and even talked about it,” she wrote. “Just in case it happened. Of course, being just a three-hour drive from home had advantages – I could be there on every single holiday and my parents could come over on the weekends. I have a lot of friends and family in Seattle, so this could be fun! … I screwed it up in my head until I started thinking, ‘Damn it, why shouldn’t we want to go to Seattle?’ “

Price’s agent Gerry Johannson even called the night before Wednesday’s draft, according to the Post, to suggest they were ready to postpone the goalkeeper’s Thursday operation in New York and fly to Seattle immediately if necessary.

“Carey’s agent called to tell Carey to keep his phone with him in the morning,” she wrote. “If Seattle takes him we will change our trip and go to Seattle to schedule the operation in New York for a later date. And that’s when it hit me. I looked at Carey in shock and said you can’t go to the draft party and put on an Kraken jersey and walk around in front of everyone! How disrespectful to all Habs fans and this franchise!

“We continued to discuss how it is a deal at the end of the day and players are traded away all the time. I got that, but it still didn’t feel right. I couldn’t concentrate on how Carey did it. “

Ultimately, the Kraken ended up taking young Canadiens defender Cale Fleury instead.

But it shows that you can never be sure in sports.

After all, the Kraken now has to accept a combined annual salary cap hit of 9.4 million US dollars for the goalkeeper tandem Grubauer and Chris Driedger for at least three seasons.

That’s not too far from an alternate combo hit of $ 11.2 million for Price and young goalkeeper Vitek Vanecek in the first season, then about $ 14 million a year to keep both for a few years after that.

Or the Kraken could have immediately bite $ 14 million a year for the next three years by sticking Driedger with Price, as he has since done with Vanecek. Anyway, there isn’t a business-breaking gap between what is here and what many have envisioned.

But we don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Neither does Angela Price, who described the experience as “whole mind (expletive)” and “a chicken game” that she hopes will never be repeated.

Now let’s just hope the Kraken doesn’t have any more accounting errors lurking in Grubauer’s contract so we can all move on to discussing Kraken goalkeepers – actual or planned – depending on how often they stop pucks.

Copyright 2021 Tribune Content Agency.