Price and Bergeron Headline Hockey Hall of Fame Class of 2026: 'A Long Road to Get to This Point'

Photo: Montreal Canadiens goaltender Carey Price during a team practice, January 17, 2013, by Kristina Servant, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). File photo, not from the induction weekend.

The call came while Carey Price was driving to visit his grandmother in the hospital. His phone lit up with a name he did not expect on the caller ID: Hockey Hall of Fame. He took the news in. His grandmother, he later said, made a recovery. "It was a blessed day."

That was June. On Monday, November 9, the drive ends in Toronto, where Price and Patrice Bergeron headline the Hockey Hall of Fame's Class of 2026. They will be enshrined alongside Pekka Rinne, Keith Tkachuk and Cindy Curley in the player category, with longtime executive Brian Burke going in as a builder. The six spoke to reporters in Toronto on Saturday, on the eve of the ceremony.

The kid from Anahim Lake, on the long road

Price grew up in Anahim Lake, a remote community in British Columbia where chasing a hockey dream meant planes, trucks and long empty highways. "A very large part of my childhood, spending time in planes and trucks and cars with my dad," he said. "I'm grateful to him and the rest of my family for their support in getting here."

Picked fifth overall in the 2005 draft, Price played all 15 of his NHL seasons in Montreal: 361 wins, a .917 save percentage, a 2.51 goals-against average and 49 shutouts in 712 games. In 2015 he swept the Hart Trophy as league MVP, the Vezina Trophy as the top goaltender and the Ted Lindsay Award as the players' choice for the league's most outstanding player. His playoff numbers were better still — .919 and 2.39 in 92 games — and his last great act was dragging an underdog Canadiens team to the 2021 Stanley Cup final before a knee injury ended his playing days after the 2021-22 season.

He enters the Hall in his second year of eligibility. "A long road to get to this point," he said. "I'm just extremely thankful for that journey and everything I learned along the way."

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Bergeron, first ballot, no surprise at all

If Price's case was built on carrying a franchise, Bergeron's was built on doing everything right for nearly two decades. The centre from L'Ancienne-Lorette, Quebec, spent all 19 of his NHL seasons with the Boston Bruins after being picked 45th overall in 2003, and he walks in first-ballot — the only member of the class to do so.

He won the Stanley Cup in 2011, collected a record six Selke Trophies as the league's best defensive forward, and finished with 1,040 points in 1,294 games, plus 128 in 170 playoff games. He retired in 2023, and the Bruins have already announced his No. 37 will be retired during the 2026-27 season. "A huge honour," Bergeron said Saturday. "You look back at all the memories and the people that have helped you along the way."

They wore the Maple Leaf together on the 2014 Olympic team that steamrolled the field in Sochi, and again at the World Cup of Hockey two years later. Bergeron, who also owns gold from Vancouver 2010, smiled when asked about sharing the stage with Price: "It was a lot more fun to be on his side with Team Canada. A legendary career."

A class with real range

Rinne, 43, spent parts of 15 seasons with the Nashville Predators, winning the Vezina in 2018 and finishing 369-213-75 with a .917 save percentage in 683 games. Tkachuk, 52, put up 1,065 points in 1,201 games over 18 seasons, and his sons Matthew and Brady, both NHL stars in their own right, will be in the crowd on Monday. "They'll probably be critiquing me when I'm up there speaking and making faces," Tkachuk joked. "They're great kids, they're supportive, and I'm just glad they have the opportunity to be here."

Curley, 62, captained the United States to three silver medals at the world championships in the 1990s, when women's hockey was still fighting for ice time and attention. "There's just so many people that wouldn't give up," she said. "I just benefitted from their hard work. I'm truly grateful." Burke, 71, rounds out the class as a builder after a front-office career that ran through Hartford, Vancouver, Anaheim, Toronto, Calgary and Pittsburgh, and a Stanley Cup as Anaheim's general manager in 2007. "Still pinching myself," he said. "Like a dream come true."

The class was announced on June 22, and induction weekend began Saturday with the annual Hall of Fame Game hosted by the Maple Leafs. Monday's ceremony puts two of the defining Canadian players of their generation into the same room on the same night — a fitting end to a long road that, for Price, started on the highways of northern B.C. with his dad at the wheel.