TALK OF ROY’S RETURN HANGS OVER THERRIEN
Fans likely to look to former goalie for salvation if Habs get off to a bad start
It was a smoking hot day Thursday in Montreal, with Environment Canada issuing a heat warning as humidex values approached 40C.
And that was before Patrick Roy announced he was resigning as head coach of the Colorado Avalanche.
Canadiens coach Michel Therrien likes to work on his tan during the summer, and it was looking good when he showed up at his annual charity golf tournament Tuesday at Le Mirage in Terrebonne. But following Roy’s announcement, Therrien might want to go out and buy some Coppertone SPF 60.
The heat was already on Therrien after his team missed the playoffs last season, and it will only get hotter as Canadiens fans speculate about Roy and start debating whether the Hall of Famer — whose No. 33 hangs from the rafters of the Bell Centre — would be a good fit behind the Montreal bench.
Roy won the Jack Adams Trophy as the NHL’s top coach in his first season with the Avalanche, but the club missed the playoffs the last two years. The Denver Post described Roy’s resignation as a “stunning move.”
When Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin announced at his post-mortem news conference last season that Therrien would return behind the bench, owner Geoff Molson said he paid his GM to make those hockey decisions. It wasn’t exactly the strongest vote of confidence in the coach from the owner, so you would have to think Therrien is on a short leash if the Canadiens get off to a bad start.
Molson has made it clear in the past that having a French-speaking coach is “a very important factor” with the Canadiens, limiting the candidates for the job. Kirk Muller was brought in as an “associate coach” this summer, but the former Canadiens captain doesn’t speak French.
Things didn’t go very well — on the ice or in the French media — when the Canadiens hired anglo Randy Cunneyworth as an interim head coach to replace Jacques Martin during the 201112 season. Molson brought in Bergevin and Therrien before the start of the next season.
So crack open a couple of cold ones and let the summer speculation begin about the possibility of Roy returning to Montreal.
Personally, I’d be very surprised if it ever happened under Bergevin, who has a contract that runs through the 2021-22 season. The GM just traded away one huge personality in P.K. Subban and is surely in no rush to bring in another one. Molson seems to be on the same page as his GM when it comes to larger-than-life personalities on his club, and there’s only so much room in the Canadiens’ foxhole.
In Colorado, Roy had problems getting along with former Avalanche teammate Joe Sakic, now the club’s vice-president and general manager. They had different views on how to build the team, which brings back memories of the Bob Gainey-Guy Carbonneau situation years ago with the Canadiens, which also didn’t end well and destroyed their friendship.
“I have thought long and hard over the course of the summer about how I might improve this team to give it the depth it needs to bring it to a higher level,” Roy said in a statement announcing his resignation. “To achieve this, the vision of the coach and VPhockey operations needs to be perfectly aligned with that of the organization. He must also have a say in the decisions that impact the team’s performance. These conditions are not currently met.
“Though it saddens me, I have put much thought (into) this decision in recent weeks and have come to be fully comfortable with it.”
When the Canadiens were looking for a new coach and GM after that dismal 2011-12 season that ended with Cunneyworth, polls in Montreal showed Roy was the fans’ No. 1 choice for both jobs. After Bergevin got the GM job, he interviewed Roy as a possible head coach before hiring Therrien.
Before Roy coached his first game in Montreal with the Avalanche in March 2014, he told reporters: “I could have both (Canadiens) jobs if it was voted by the fans. I truly appreciate that. I thought that was a great gesture from them to give me that opportunity to be on top (in the polls). It made me feel good with the fans. It’s not that I had doubt, but at the same time it was nice to see the past was way behind us and everybody had moved on. They could see me as their next coach or GM. For the ego, I have to admit, it feels good.”
Enjoy the rest of your summer, Michel.
Don’t forget the Coppertone.