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If the story of Carey Prices induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame were solely about hockey, it would be interesting enough.
World Junior gold, Calder Cup champion, Olympic champion, World Cup of Hockey champion, Vezina Trophy winner, Hart Trophy winner, Ted Lindsay Award winner, Montreal Canadiens franchise leader in games played and wins; Prices hockey resume speaks for itself.
But what makes it truly fascinating is the unlikeliness of it all, and the humanity behind it.
Advertisement When Price was 2 years old, his parents Jerry and Lynda moved from the lower mainland of British Columbia to Anahim Lake to ensure their young son would be in touch with his Indigenous roots.
It is a tiny, remote village in northern B.C.
of fewer than 2,000 people, the home of the Ulkatcho First Nation, of which Lynda Price served as chief.
Coming from my background, I think that when he was young, I felt like it was really important for him to know our family history, Lynda Price said in 2018.
So I did my best to teach him about our roots.
I think that was important for him to understand.
One problem: Anahim Lake had no indoor hockey rinks.
Jerry Price was a former professional goaltender who was once drafted by the Philadelphia Flyers, but the lack of rinks did not stop him from helping to get Carey Prices hockey career off the ground, as it were.
It began with shoveling off the surface of a creek called Corkscrew that ran through the Price familys backyard.
It continued with Jerry getting his pilots license and acquiring a bush plane to fly his son to hockey practice several times a week in Williams Lake, roughly a 3 1/2-hour drive away.
When he and I were out playing on the creek, we had goalie pads, and wed play goalie games and stuff like that, Jerry Price said in 2019.
But I never pushed him to be a goalie at all.
It was his choice entirely.
He was a good player.
He had a hard shot, and he was a good skater.
To get from this backyard creek thats a 10-hour drive north of Vancouver to the Hockey Hall of Fame on the corner of Yonge and Front in downtown Toronto arriving via manning the goal crease for 15 years under the intense glare of the hockey mecca that is Montreal is storybook stuff.
Even more so is how many people Price inspired along the way, the varied groups of people he touched.
Prices playing style inspired a generation of goalies looking to emulate his smooth, fluid movement in his crease, and the ease with which he made difficult saves look routine.
To goalies, no matter the numbers, Price was the standard for years because no one could perfectly mimic his efficiency of movement.
Advertisement To the First Nations peoples of Canada and beyond, Price was an inspiration, proving what was possible in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
One of his defining moments as a player was speaking directly to Indigenous youth when accepting the 2015 Vezina Trophy, with Lynda in attendance at the NHL awards in Las Vegas.
I would like to take a moment to encourage First Nations youth, Price said that night.
A lot of people would say that it is very improbable that I would make it to this point in my life.
Ive made it here because I wasnt discouraged.
Ive worked hard to get here, took advantage of every opportunity that I had, and Id really like to encourage First Nations youth to be leaders in their communities, be proud of your heritage, and dont be discouraged from the improbable.
Price also became an inspiration late in his career to people suffering from problems with substance abuse.
He was battling his own alcohol addiction when he very publicly asked for help, announcing he had checked into a residential rehabilitation facility in 2021 and then detailed why he did so a year later.
Maybe I could have gone out and stopped on my own.
Yeah, maybe, Price said then.
But at the end of the day, I wanted to be able to show its OK to ask for help.
Carey Price the hockey player had enough success and touched enough people to warrant inclusion in the 2026 Hockey Hall of Fame class in his second year of eligibility.
The Canadiens franchise wins record had stood for more than 50 years when he broke it, and he was at one point considered the best player in the world, let alone the best goalie.
But the person behind the goalie might be worth celebrating even more.
Price, a naturally introverted person who loves nothing more than spending days in the woods hunting by himself, showed time and again how he cared for others.
Whether that was comforting a young boy who had lost his mother to cancer, or providing a core memory to a teenager in a wheelchair after a particularly difficult loss, or any number of empathetic gestures that happened in private and we will never know about, Price consistently displayed that he understood the power his prodigious hockey talent had to make an impact on lives in a positive way.
This understanding is not criteria for inclusion in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
But it is an element of Prices story that merits consideration as he is celebrated for entering hockey immortality.