I mean the rebuild starts quicker

Meier & Tarasenko are good players, but the Canadiens youth are not ready to compete. Bringing those guys on will come with enormous pressure to win and they need defensemen like Mailloux & Hutson and forwards like Slafkovsky, Mesar, Beck & Roy to develop at their pace. Even a player like Bedard or Fantilli if we are lucky enough to get one, will need a few years.

The sad truth is no matter who we add to the roster, the core still needs time to develop and gel. Let's see where we are in 2024 and then we can start adding Free Agents.

Even with Meier and Tarasenko, that team isnt competing with that defense core

If you think Price is retiring you don’t understand money. As long as he stays on LTIR he gets paid, as soon as he announces his retirement he no longer gets paid. Nobody is walking away from $23.5 million dollars still owed to him.

Agreed. Plus Price retiring while still collecting a cheque is perfectly fine from a Habs perspective. The major worry for the Habs is if he decides to come back. Then they'd have to always keep 10.5M in cap space available at all times for him in case he gets healthy again. CP retiring makes the cap a lot easier to manage. Heck, it may even be used as a trade chip to a team a la Seabrook/Weber/etc...