The Montreal Canadiens traded the contract of Carey Price and a 2026 fifth-round pick to the San Jose Sharks on Friday, receiving defenceman Gannon Laroque in return.
The move brings Price’s time with the Canadiens to an end just over 20 years after he was selected fifth overall in the 2005 NHL Draft. He hasn’t played since the final game of the 2021-22 season, a 10-2 victory over the Florida Panthers that stands as his 361st and final win, placing him 23rd all-time. The expectation is that he will be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame next year on the strength of his NHL play and his decorated international career.
Laroque, 22, is 6’2, 202lbs and was a fourth-round pick in the 2021 NHL Draft. He played 18 games in the 2023-24 season, split evenly between the AHL and ECHL. He evens out the contract totals as the Sharks are at the 50-contract limit. Due to injuries that kept him out of action last season, however, he may not play another game.
The contract carries an average annual value of $10.5 million, but Price just received a $5.5-million signing bonus on September 1 for the final season of the eight-year contract he signed in 2017. His new organization will only be required to pay the $2-million base salary that remains over the course of the 2025-26 campaign.
Montreal could have simply placed Price on long-term injured reserve as it had done for the past three seasons. However, when a team ends up exceeding the season’s salary cap upper limit while using LTIR, any performance bonuses paid during that season end up as a cap overage for the next year. The Habs are dealing with such a penalty for 2025-26, with $1,752,500 shaved off the cap space they have to work with.
This year, newcomer Zachary Bolduc, Ivan Demidov, Lane Hutson, and Oliver Kapanen could potentially hit new bonuses, as could several other roster hopefuls in the system like Adam Engström, David Reinbacher, and Florian Xhekaj. At a time when the Canadiens are about to begin adding players in free agency and at the trade deadline, they would rather not carry another cap overage penalty for 2026-27, and trading Price’s contract makes it unlikely they will exceed the cap again this year to have another one applied.
With the salary cap already projected to rise by about $8.5 million next season, the Canadiens would enjoy an increase of approximately $10 million from what is available to them this year with no overage penalty carrying forward. That is a significant amount of money that the team will have to help re-sign Hutson and Bolduc, and look at upgrades in free agency or via trade.
