Too early? Roy thinks risk always worth it

ake me out, Coach,” Avalanche coach and Hall of Fame former goalie Patrick Roy used to think at the end of games with his teams down by a goal or more.

Most players never want to come out of a game, but Roy did when his teamwas in need of a late goal. Now that he is in charge of making game decisions in the NHL, Roy is starting what may become a trend around the league: pulling the goalie early— really early.

Tradition holds that you don’t pull your goalie for the extra skater until there’s about a minute left. To Roy, that tradition never made sense. Why wait until time is almost out to give your team a manpower advantage?

“As a goalie, I would have loved to see my coach doing that,” Roy said Friday, one day after pulling Semyon Varlamov from Game 1 against Minnesota with 3:01 left and his team down 4-3, a game the Avs won 5-4 in overtime. “You want to see your team tying (the game). It doesn’t matter if it’s three minutes or two minutes or one minute. It’s just a feeling. I know one day it might bite us, but it’s a long-term thing; if you do it 10 times and on 10 times you score four goals, that’s pretty big.”

As journalist Adam Gretz showed in a nice piece of stats analysis for SB Nation, Roy is showing that pulling the goalie earlier than conventional wisdom has held may be smarter thinking. Five times this season, including Thursday, Roy has pulled his goalie with two or more minutes left in a game and gotten a goal from his team. In those four regular-season games, the Avs wound up getting five of a possible eight points.

Roy started doing it regularly in a Feb. 3 game at New Jersey, one in which Jean-Sebastien Giguere was pulled with 2:07 left while the Avs trailed 1-0. P.A. Parenteau scored to send the game to overtime, and Ryan O’Reilly won it in OT. Two games later, at Philadelphia, Roy pulled Varlamov with 3:33 left and the Avs down 2-0. Nathan MacKinnon scored, but the Avs went on to lose 3-1. Still, the Avs’ offense had been dormant all night until Roy shook things up.

The Avs went on later to score late goals against San Jose, the Rangers and against theWild in Game 1, all with Roy deciding to act sooner rather than later.

Roy doesn’t just look at the clock when making his decision. He makes his move when he feels the opposition has its weakest defensive players on the ice, hoping to keep them pinned in their own zone with the extra attacker.

“It forces them to defend and makes them tired. The longer it lasts, the tougher it is for them to make the right play,” Roy said.

Roy said he did this often while coaching the Quebec Remparts of the QMJHL too. He said the earliest he ever pulled a goalie there was with 17 minutes left in the third period. Once while coaching a bantam team in a 4-0 deficit in the second period, he pulled his goalie. Though his team wound up losing, he said it scored two goals right after to make it a 4-2 game entering the third.

The Avs’ season-long motto of “Why not us?” is well-exemplified by Roy’s out-of-the-box thinking on pulling the goalie. While many think “Why risk it?” in life, Roy’s way of thinking always is “Why not?”