The Price Of Good Mentoring

You may recall that during the lockout of Ought-Four/Ought-Five, Olie Kolzig went back to his roots a bit and helped tutor a pair of young goalies playing for the Tri-City Americans of the WHL, Olie's former team and the squad he co-owns with Dallas Stars center Stu Barnes.

One of the goalies Kolzig worked with was a kid named Carey Price, who credits Olie with being "a big help to [his] game" and teaching him "a lot about being competitive."

Fast-forward a few years and Price is so ready to be the number one goaltender in Montreal (despite Olie's pre-season urgings to the contrary) that his back-up is deemed expendable and shipped off to Washington, where he and Kolzig now battle for starts and, quite possibly, a single contract this summer.

So when you think about it, since Price clearly would have been nothing without Kolzig's tutelage, Olie really has no one to blame but himself for the current goalie controversy - he had every chance to ruin Price ("N-n-no, Carey, you play the puck off your chest and back into traffic"), but didn't.

Ah, irony.