Roy a winner again in Montreal
BYGONES AND A SENSE OF PRIDE as former Hab returns to city for first time as NHL coach
It has been a week for anniversaries, nostalgia and reminiscence, some of it distinctly bittersweet.
In looking back over 20 years of sports columns, I covered two pivotal events in the sporting history of this city: the death of the Expos and the departure of Patrick Roy from the Canadiens.
One was like the slow, agonizing death of a loved one. The other blew up like a Roman candle.
The death of the Expos left this town without a sports team. The departure of Roy (and the event that made it possible, the firing of Serge Savard and Jacques Demers and the hiring of Réjean Houle and Mario Tremblay) left the legendary Canadiens franchise in a slough of mediocrity from which it has never entirely recovered.
I wrote literally hundreds of stories on the death throes of the Expos and only a few on Roy’s departure, but the latter event is like a still-smouldering fire, nearly 20 years after it happened.
After Roy was traded to Colorado in December of 1995, I covered his farewell news conference at a Laval hotel, then flew to Denver to cover his first game with the Avalanche. I watched as he beat the Habs, then casually flicked the puck to Tremblay as they passed one another on the ice, a gesture that drew some white-hot criticism back in Montreal.
What was not entirely clear then is absolutely clear now: the Roy trade signalled the beginning of the team’s slide from the pinnacle of the hockey world to somewhere near the bottom — a slide GM Marc Bergevin and coach Michel Therrien are still trying to reverse.
That disastrous trade, of course, did not occur in a vacuum. It was part and parcel with the panicky decision former team president Ronald Corey made four games into that 1995-96 season, when he fired Savard, Demers, assistant GM André Boudrias and pro scout Carol Vadnais. If there was an argument for dismissing Savard and Demers, the timing was wretched and the hiring of Houle and Tremblay nothing short of catastrophic.
Houle, a nice guy who was in way over his head, did his best under the cir- cumstances. Tremblay, a hothead who was never seen as particularly bright or as a student of the game, behaved like precisely what he was.
The blame for the entire fiasco lies squarely on the bumbling Corey. The whole thing might have worked for a time despite Tremblay’s limitations, except that on top of his lack of experience, he nursed a grudge against Roy, his former roommate. He and Roy had words in a Long Island coffee shop before Tremblay’s hiring was announced, the first salvo in what would become a running battle between coach and superstar, culminating in the infamous blow-up the night Roy told Corey he had played his last game for the Canadiens.
As hockey blunders go, the deal Houle made wasn’t any worse than the 1990 Serge Savard trade that sent Chris Chelios and a draft pick to Chicago for Denis Savard. Chelios was perhaps guilty of loving the Montreal nightlife a little too much, but Denis Savard’s skills were waning and Chelios would play for two more decades as one of the premier defencemen in the league.
How different would the history of this team l ook today had the Canadiens retained Chelios and Roy? Or if they hadn’t made other bad decisions that cost them the services of Guy Carbonneau, Éric Desjardins and John LeClair? Or if gritty captain Mike Keane hadn’t been foolishly tossed into the Roy deal?
It says here that there would be at least one more Stanley Cup banner dangling from the ceiling at the Bell Centre if not for the string of unfortunate decisions of which the Roy trade is only the most prominent.
There have been good seasons since Roy left, middling seasons and horror-show campaigns, most notably the one presided over by Pierre Gauthier and poor Randy Cunneyworth. There have been no great seasons, nor are there any in sight.
Perhaps that’s why Montrealers are now so eager to embrace Roy. His return to Montreal Tuesday evening carried with it the sense that the circle has been closed at last. Even the ceremony retiring Roy’s number didn’t quite accomplish that. This time, there was a sense that Montreal is intensely proud of Roy and what he has accomplished, here and in Colorado — and that all is forgiven (if not forgotten) on both sides.
Even as Roy’s Avs were losing to Michel Therrien’s Canadiens Tuesday, Roy emerged as the winner. Therrien is a coach who (fairly or unfairly) somehow remains unpopular even when he’s winning.
Meanwhile, in the lead-up to the game, praise for Roy poured in from every side. Deservingly so. He is a millionaire superstar who rode the buses in the “Q” for years to learn his craft as a coach. He has turned a young team without a surplus of elite players into a contender in the very tough Western Conference.
With a dozen games to play, Roy has established himself as the favourite to win the Jack Adams Award as the league’s best coach — and he has emerged as that rarest of rarities in the world of sports, the superstar player who reinvents himself as an outstanding coach.
You have fiery players, smart players and talented players. Once in a blue decade, you get a player who is all three, and Roy was that. Now it appears he brings the same combination of talents behind the bench.
As for the Canadiens, the team he once defined, there is a lesson to be learned here. Generational, iconic players are few and far between. When you are lucky enough to have a Chelios or a Roy, you don’t deal them away.
The Canadiens have two players who in many ways mirror Chelios and Roy in P.K. Subban and Carey Price. Price has always been protected and lionized within the organization. Subban, not so much. Therrien is still playing head games with his Norris Trophy winner — and while Subban has carefully avoided anything verging on a public break with his coach, he has to be simmering inside, especially after incidents like the ridiculous longshift episode Sunday night in Buffalo.
Experience should have taught the Canadiens the price you pay when you sacrifice your best and brightest on the altar of conformity. If history repeats itself with P.K. Subban, if it builds to the point where Subban quietly tells his agent he wants out of here, Therrien and Bergevin will have only themselves to blame.