The Canadiens have to learn to do better by their icons.

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Patrick Roy's blow-up with coach Mario Tremblay resulted in the goalie stalking off the ice and demanding a trade.

Photograph by : Montreal Gazette

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That truth hit me this week while reading the piece by Dave Stubbs on Guy Lafleur and his DVD film, Il etait une fois. I have heard the story many times, but this was the first time I made the connection between the end of Lafleur's career with the Habs and the sad, angry way Patrick Roy's tenure ended.

Lafleur and Roy were the last two of what could be called the iconic players of the most legendary franchise in the game. While the Canadiens have had whole buckets full of stars and Hall of Famers, there have been no more than five towering figures who made the team what it is today.

Howie Morenz. Rocket Richard. Jean Beliveau. Guy Lafleur. Patrick Roy. They were the players who in their day electrified an entire province and reached such status that it was possible, with a straight face, to call the old Forum St. Patrick's Cathedral. If hockey is a religion in Quebec, these men are its high priests.

And three of them - Richard, Lafleur and Roy - saw their careers end in a sad, bungled fashion.

The Rocket left at a desk without a job, until he walked out to make his living selling fishing line and heating oil.

Lafleur played five minutes a game until the story of his very premature retirement was broken by my protege Red Fisher and the Flower walked away from the team and the sport he loved.

Roy's celebrated blow-up with Mario Tremblay resulted in him stalking off the ice and demanding a trade, after which he would win two more Stanley Cups for the Colorado Avalanche.

In the Rocket's case, his fate was as much a product of the times as anything else. Other athletes of his stature, from Babe Ruth to Mickey Mantle to Jim Brown, received much the same treatment from the bosses.

With Lafleur and Roy, the problem cropped up with a jealous former teammate turned head coach. You would have expected such behaviour from the hot-tempered, insecure and immature Tremblay, a man of limited abilities as a player and limited intellect as a coach, who was parachuted into a job that was way over his head.

The surprise was that Lemaire, an offensively talented player and a defensive genius as a coach, could be so petty as to attempt to get even with Lafleur for nothing at all except that Lafleur was the transcendent superstar, while Lemaire was merely a very good centre of Lafleur's line.

Lemaire's bullying of Lafleur, like Tremblay's similar treatment of Roy, was made possible by the ineffectual, vacillating, lightweight team president Ronald Corey, the original Teflon man.

When Corey added insult to injury by firing Lafleur after the mercurial superstar refused to accept an office clerk's salary, he began the process that would eventually seal his reputation as perhaps the most inept team president in the history of the Canadiens.

That process ended when the waffling, bumbling Corey could find no way to defuse the explosive situation that existed between his star goaltender and his coach, with the result that Roy was traded and the Canadiens stumbled into a mediocrity from which they have yet to recover.

There are, of course, many other similarities between the careers of Roy and Lafleur. They have both led the kind of lives of which soap operas are made, making you wonder whether they would not have been better off to spend their careers, as Mario Lemieux did, in a place like Pittsburgh where they would not be under the microscope 24 hours a day.

Whatever, there is a cautionary tale here both for stars who might want to play here (and aren't you glad the Canadiens did NOT trade for Vincent Lecavalier?) and the coaches and GMs who have to deal with them.

First of all, you never put a former teammate in charge of a superstar. You would think that a man of Lemaire's accomplishments and intellect would be mature enough not to seek revenge on the man who out-shone him as a player - but he wasn't.

Second, you have to have a team president or a GM with the intelligence and clout to step in and sort out a situation like that before it spirals out of control. When your coach is firing shots at your star goaltender's throat during practice, you have a problem.

I have been critical of Pierre Boivin in the past, but despite the lack of Stanley Cups on his watch, Boivin has done a far better job at the helm of this team than Corey ever did. It is under Boivin that the Canadiens have become an economic juggernaut, to the point where the value of the team more than doubled since the Corey era.

Some of the credit has to go to former owner George Gillett Jr., but it was on Boivin's watch that the club finally began to treat its former stars with the proper respect. Most of the right jerseys were retired. Even Roy became the last of the former greats to have his number retired, a rapprochement that was once unthinkable.

A clear policy on the team's approach to such players, of course, has to come from the top - so you have to hope that the dithering NHL finally gets around to signing off on the Molson purchase of the club and that the Molson brothers carry on the Gillett/Boivin traditions.

Of course, the next problem might be more difficult. Before they can offer better treatment to their next iconic player, the Canadiens must first find and develop a genuine, home-grown superstar.

Given that the last such talent left town in a huff 14 years ago, that is easier said than done.

jacktodd46@hotmail.com