Roy’s feud withHabs long gone
Saturday will be the 19th anniversary of when Patrick Roy took the phone call from newMontreal Canadiens general manager Rejean Houle and heard that he had been traded to the Avalanche.
Monday at the Pepsi Center, Roy will be behind the Avalanche bench, coaching against his former team, long after grudges— at least we are told so — have been forgotten; and six years after Roy’s No. 33 was lifted to the rafters at the Bell Centre inMontreal.
The game is the fourth for Roy against the Canadiens in the regular season as the Avalanche’s coach.
Will the Colorado vs. Montreal game always be different for him?
“As a player, I would say that every time I was going in (to Montreal), I wanted to win badly,” Roy said Sunday. “I was ready for those games. Every player has pride. I’d be a hypocrite to say that it didn’tmatter tome when I was playingMontreal. But as a coach? Not really. I have a lot of respect forMontreal. Things have changed so much over there. They retiredmy jersey. It’s a new coaching staff, a new GM, a new organization. Quite honestly, I hope things go well for them.”
In fact, while this was obscured in the coverage of Roy’s reaction to being left in too long in the infamous loss to Detroit, and his perceived “banishment,” discussions between Colorado andMontreal about reuniting Roy with his former agent, Avalanche GM Pierre Lacroix, had been going on for several weeks.
Serge Savard, the Canadiens’ GM at the time, later revealed that in mid-October he had agreed in principle to send Roy to Colorado for winger Owen Nolan, goalie Stephane Fiset and a draft choice. That came off the table when Savard and coach Jacques Demers were fired. Nolan was traded to San Jose for the wandering Latvian, Sandis Ozolinsh, and the ColoradoMontreal deal was reshaped and consummated Dec. 6.
“I heard rumors early in the season about the possibility of being traded to Colorado, but I nevermade a big story or a big thing of it,” Roy said. “At the time Iwas making $4 million and itwas probably one of the first times Montreal paid a player that kind of money, and I knewIwas not part of their culture, what they wanted to do. At the same time, I