To fully understand where Carey Price is at right now requires context. Lots of it.
His first public words since the night of Game 5, since losing in the Stanley Cup Final and coming as close as he’s come to achieving a lifelong goal, reflected what has unfortunately been a pattern in his career. That night, Price was sitting next to Shea Weber, knowing not only that Weber’s career was in jeopardy but also that his own knee would need to be fixed. Again.
Those two ideas, side by side, as Price digested and absorbed the disappointment of what had just happened probably did not fully compute in his mind at the time. But now, six months later, knowing Weber is all but guaranteed to never play in the NHL again and Price is unable to say with great certainty whether he will or not, that moment seems rather poignant. The two of them, great friends, great players, Olympic champions together, linked in their desire to get that one thing they don’t have, dealing with the biggest disappointments of their professional lives, not knowing what the future holds, staring into a camera and trying to talk about it.
On Sunday night, there was Price, staring into a camera, his future no more clear than Weber’s was that night in July, trying to talk about something he’s not sure about with any certainty.
“I definitely knew that it was going to be close to the end for Webs, and I was really feeling for him,” Price said of his feelings the night of July 7. “I knew that I was going to be having a procedure in the offseason. So at that particular time, I wasn’t thinking about it. Off the top of my mind, I was thinking about what we had just gone through.
