YES, I remember that name, I had suggested to keep him and get rid of Price
I was told I was crazy (Because Yaroslav was not tall enough as Price) was one of the arguments.
Look at Boston goaltending these days, they have a super duo, where thier backup is much better then Montreal's so called number 1.
The main reason they kept Price was because they had just picked him 5th overall, he was younger & had more potential than Halak. Keeping him over Halak was a no-brainer. Look, they made the right move by selecting Carey Price 5th overall. Go back to that draft and the only player of note after Price is Kopitar and he was selected 11th. Many teams passed on him. And Price is a likely hall-of-famer and did play to his potential for most of his career.
The problem is that the team in recent years has been built around Price. The organization figured the league would remain the same and would be a low goal-scoring league. They figured that as long as they could score 2 goals per game they'd win the majority of the games since Price would take care of the rest. But in the meantime the game changed when the league made adjustments to encourage more goals to be scored. It became once again a high-scoring league where emphasis is on goal-scoring and not as much on defence. The end-result is that the habs failed to adapt and which is why most of their forwards are speedy, grinder types with no scoring touch. And getting rid of Markov & Subban didn't help scoring either. This duo was deadly on the powerplay.
But we could see future problems would come about when Geoff Molson overruled his GM and ordered him to re-sign PK Subban to the biggest contract in hockey at the time. The big contract was one of the reasons why the team felt it had to trade him when it did (his non-movement clause would kick in that July 1st) and the only way to get rid of him at the time was to take on a similar calibre player with a similar contract: Shea Weber.
But the team didn't learn its lesson from the Subban signing and just a couple of years ago made Carey Price the highest-paid goaltender in history. He's also the highest-paid player on his team. But the biggest problem with that contract was that it's an 8-year contract. Like Weber's contract it only ends in 2026 when Price will be nearly 40 years old and Weber will be well over 40. Weber's contract is what people pointed to at the time of his trade for Subban: Subban was the younger player and he may still be playing hockey when his contract would end. This wouldn't likely be the case with Weber unless he's an anomaly like Chara or Chelios.
Contract such as these are cap-killers, especially when one of those contracts belongs to the starting goaltender. Weber is still productive now but how will he look 2 years from now when he'll be 36 with 5 more years left?
Had Marc Bergevin been allowed to stick to his guns in his tough negotiation with Subban's camp the team would likely not be in the mess it is today. Subban may still be a hab. Price likely would have re-signed with the habs but possibly not for as much as he did. And the team would have more cap money to work with in order to attract free agents who can put the puck in the net on a regular basis.
