Canadiens to honour Roy for 'on-ice performance'

John MacKinnon, Edmonton Journal

There was much "time-to-forgive-and-forget" talk in Montreal on Thursday when the Canadiens announced they will retire the No. 33 jersey of Hall of Fame goalie Patrick Roy on Nov. 22 at the Bell Centre.

Little to none of the talk had to do with Roy's role in the deplorable on-ice attack of an opposing goalie by his son, Jonathan, during a Quebec Major Junior Hockey League playoff game last spring.

There was little to no talk of the recently announced sanctions the QMJHL will impose on fighting this season -- a direct response to that ugly episode last spring.

The new rules -- they might as well call them the Roy Rules -- are a direct response to an "enough-is-enough" intervention by Quebec sports minister Michelle Courchesne, a hockey mom fed up with needless violence in the sport, particularly among teenagers.

No, the talk at the Bell Centre was all about the infamous night of Dec. 2, 1995, when Roy became enraged that then head coach Mario Tremblay had left him in goal as he was beaten for nine goals in an 11-1 shellacking by the Detroit Red Wings at the Forum.

The humiliation prompted Roy, a proud man and as fierce a competitor as ever played in the NHL, to glare balefully at Tremblay as he left the ice, then lean towards then president Ronald Corey and tell him he had played his last game as a member of the Canadiens.

It's now time, it turns out, to patch up the rift between St. Patrick and Les Glorieux. Roy led the team to three Cup finals, winning two of them -- in 1986 as a raw, quirky 20-year-old rookie; and in 1993, when Montreal won 10 straight overtime games en route to the last Cup won by a team based in Canada.

The jersey raising will come on a night the Boston Bruins pay a visit to Montreal and will be a highlight of the Canadiens' centennial, along with the all-star game, the entry draft in June and, GM Bob Gainey hopes, a 25th Stanley Cup victory. That's one Cup every four years, on average, which even Canadiens-haters would have to concede is mighty impressive, 100 years down the road.

For more than a decade, Roy was a larger-than-life part of that legacy of excellence and Gainey spoke admiringly Thursday about the "package" Roy brought to the Canadiens: his drive, his hunger to succeed, the fact that he was "no maintenance," as far as motivation was concerned.

It's also true that, like more than a few truly great athletes, Roy's burning desire to succeed has regrettably spewed out as anti-social rage off the ice -- too often, many believe. It's hard not to be deeply conflicted about Roy the coach, the father, the role model.

Would you want your son to play for Roy's Remparts de Quebec? Would the invaluable lessons in becoming a winner that your kid would doubtless learn be worth being exposed to the over-the-top excesses that erupt from Roy from time to time? Roy, keep in mind, can be as decent as he can be nasty, thoughtful as he can be impulsive. For some, the trade-off would be worth it. For others ... ? Well, you would hope Roy has disqualified himself from being a candidate to lead Canada's national junior team, which will play for gold at the world junior hockey championship on home soil three times in the next four years.

When Roy was inducted into the NHL's Hall of Fame in 2006, he expressed an interest in coaching that club, but was careful to acknowledge that others probably were better prepared for the role than he was.

The episode last spring graphically demonstrates he probably is unfit for that office, period.

Still, Canadiens owner George Gillett Jr., stressed Thursday that Roy was being honoured by the NHL club for his "on-ice performance." The Canadiens owner talked about believing in second chances, referring, again, to the famous split between the player and the organization.

Last March, one Montreal writer deemed Roy unfit to have his jersey retired -- owing to the melodrama of '95, not the fact he may have incited his son to attack another player last season. In Montreal and Quebec, that is a minority point of view.

For many in Quebec, there is a clear separation between Roy's legacy as a member of the Canadiens and his sometimes indefensible behaviour in other areas of his life. Some may celebrate his athletic brilliance, even as they applaud the response of the Quebec government and the QMJHL to his 'law-of-the-jungle' hockey mentality.

It's a nuanced approach, one that some may struggle with.

In reality, it may be the only pragmatic compromise one can reach in a modern world, one in which the warts of all our sporting heroes no longer are so easy to hide or excuse as they might have been before YouTube, 24-hour news and sports channels, cellphone cameras, on and on.

You hope these people are forgiving the '95 rift but not forgetting last spring's brawl.

You hope they're just setting that aside so they can celebrate the career of one of the greatest goalies the game has ever seen. On that score, there is no conflict at all -- he was, in his time, simply magnificent.

St. Patrick happy to return to the fold

Red Fisher, The Gazette

The 14 banners hang in the Bell Centre rafters carrying the names and retired numbers of legendary players who for so many years contributed so much to making the Canadiens a team with a mystique for winning.

Now, to nobody's surprise, Patrick Roy's No. 33 will become No. 15 among the great names, great players and great human beings prior to a Boston-Canadiens game on Nov. 22.

No surprise there, because several years ago the man I christened St. Patrick early in his brilliant career was part of the grand plan for those whose numbers the organization decided to retire in celebration of its centenary.

His number is the last of a Group of Eight, starting with Dickie Moore and Yvan Cournoyer in 2005. Bernard Geoffrion and Serge Savard had their numbers retired in 2006, and the jerseys of Ken Dryden and Larry Robinson were raised aloft in 2007.

Bob Gainey's No. 23 joined them last February - and now Roy.

So there he was yesterday, wearing a Canadiens pin in the lapel of his dark suit jacket, later changing into a Canadiens sweater he wore so long before leaving abruptly - and badly - talking about family. The Canadiens family. Talking about how great an honour it is to return to that family.

There are some of us who have never forgiven Roy for walking out on the Canadiens on Dec. 2, 1995, following his - and the team's - 11-1 meltdown against the Detroit Red Wings.

(Roy allowed nine goals on 26 shots in that home game before being pulled by coach Mario Tremblay.) It was then that Roy told Canadiens president Ronald Corey before a stunned Forum crowd and a national television audience he had played his last game in Montreal. It was unprofessional at best and a gross disrespect at worst for the sweater he wore. Four days later, he was shipped to Colorado.

Yesterday, Roy the winner added another to his NHL record 551 wins (289 with the Habs) by winning over his applauding audience of media people.

"Yes, I would have loved to leave on a different note, but there is nothing I can do about it today," he said. "I had a lot of friends in the city and still have a lot of friends. The message now is it's time for me to move on and I hope it's the same for them. It's a great day, a great honour ... a chance to come back with the organization ... to be in the family of the Montreal Canadiens. When you talk about the Canadiens, you have to put the word 'family' in front of it.

"I always have been proud of my 10 years in Montreal," St. Patrick added. "This is where I learned to be a winner ... having a chance to be involved with great players. Bob was probably the best captain I had. You cannot be a Bob Gainey, but you certainly try to follow his steps and use them to advantage whenever the situation arises. I learned a lot from my days in Montreal. It was important every night to be accountable to your teammates and not only to them ... but to the fans. You realized that a good year was thinking Stanley Cup. You had to do whatever you can to win hockey games."

And oh, how Roy knew how to win hockey games and Stanley Cups. You can take this to the bank: The only reason the Canadiens won Cups in 1986 and their last one in 1993 was a goaltender named Roy.

Former Canadiens GM Savard would be the first to tell you his good luck went through the roof when he sent defenceman Robert Picard to the Winnipeg Jets on Nov. 4, 1983, for the Jets' third-round choice in the 1984 entry draft. Savard picked a kid goalie named Roy, even though he had been roughed up badly during his junior career.

"I've made some good trades," Savard told me. "I've also made some bad ones. Tell me, when you think about the best goaltender in Canadiens history ... when you think about Jacques Plante, Ken Dryden and Patrick Roy ... who do you go for? You wouldn't be wrong if you picked Roy. If he's not the best the NHL has ever seen, he's at least near the top.

"The thing about Patrick," he added, "is that he was a leader, but he took up a lot of room, know what I mean? He wasn't a leader like Jean Béliveau, who thinks about everything before doing anything. Patrick was spontaneous. Too much, maybe, but that was Patrick.

"The thing he did behind the bench which forced the Canadiens to trade him to Colorado ... don't you think that was spontaneous?" Savard asked. "He'd get an idea, and boom! He wouldn't hesitate to do it or to say it."

Roy, like the rest of us, is merely human, so I have seen him in some of his worst moments and was there for his best.

Among the latter is the night in 1986 when Roy stopped 13 shots he faced in a conference final overtime game against the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden. There he was, a 20-year-old rookie, turning aside everything until Claude Lemieux scored the winner with the Canadiens' third shot. I remember it as perhaps the greatest performance by a goaltender in an overtime period.

"It wasn't that one-sided," Gainey said with a tight little grin yesterday. "Only eight or nine of those 13 shots were scoring opportunities!"

Another example of Roy at his best was his 10 consecutive overtime wins in 1993 en route to the Canadiens' most recent Stanley Cup. Common sense dictates it's an NHL record that never will be matched.

Roy was a man of many faces throughout his career. Pleasant one minute, mean and unforgiving the next. The Patrick Roy who came to play and to win every night could be abrasive, controlling and vindictive, but that doesn't diminish his accomplishments. His NHL-high 551 wins speak for him. His four Stanley Cups (two with the Canadiens and two with Colorado) do. So do his three Conn Smythe trophies and three Vézinas.

Controversy has been a recurring theme with Roy during his career, and yet I also have seen him when his gentleness has moved people to tears. I have told this story before, but it bears repeating because I remember it leaving me giddy with pleasure.

It happened following a Canadiens morning practice in Quebec City. There was a game to be played that night, but now only Roy remained on the ice, waiting for a 10-year-old to join him.

The boy was born to pain, and lived with it bravely. He had this dream of going one-on-one with his idol, Roy.

So there they were at the Quebec Colisée, Roy skating in little circles, sending up small shivers of ice pellets, rattling the blade of his stick on the ice before settling into a crouch in his crease, looking every inch like a guy in the moments before Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final. The boy's mother looked on nervously, watching her child who hadn't smiled or laughed nearly often enough in his young life.

"Okay ... I'm ready," Roy finally yelled at the boy. "Show me your best."

It took a long time for the boy, skating on his matchstick legs, to close the 15 feet separating him from Roy's crease. A wobbly shot ... a desperate lunge from Roy and ... goal! Roy slammed his stick on the ice in mock anger. "Try that again," he muttered at the boy, who by now had a reason to smile. "I'll bet you can't do that again."

Another wobbly shot. Another goal.

Ten minutes of goal after goal followed - and after each one the boy would raise his stick skyward, his face lighting up with smiles that grew into a delighted laugh. His mother looked on from her Colisée seat - and cried.

"That was a nice thing you did this morning," I told Roy later that day. "It must have been hard."

"It was easy," Roy said.