Canadiens' Goalie Week: Patrick Roy

karine hains

Thu, Aug 29, 2024, 6:06 a.m.·4 min read

Every hockey fan has got a different story about how they got into this beautiful game of ours (no soccer is not the beautiful game, there's only one place for diving and it's at the Olympics, not on the pitch). Chances are, if you were born in the late 1970s or early '80, you witnessed Saint-Patrick's arrival on the hockey scene.

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My dad introduced me to hockey when I was five years old, at the start of the 1985-1986 season. He had always been a Quebec Nordiques fan and so wanted me to root for his team, but I just couldn't do it. The Canadiens' goaltender had caught my eye and I ended up watching every game wearing pillows on my legs and mimicking his every save, all the way to the Stanley Cup final and eventual win.

Roy's combativeness, his desire to win and his supreme confidence, which many deemed cockiness, made him my favorite almost instantly. It soon became apparent that I had picked a good one.

As a green rookie, in the Spring of 1986, he led a Montreal Canadiens team that no one expected to win to it's 23rd Stanley Cup. In 20 games played, he won 15 times and posted great numbers. A 1.93 goals-against average and a .923 save percentage guided the Habs all the way to the big prize and when everything was said and done, Roy's postseason performance earned him the first of three Conn Smythe Trophies he would win over his career as playoffs MVP.

He rapidly became the face of the franchise and allowed Montreal to win its 24th Stanley Cup in 1993. Once again, he was at his best when the occasion called for it and he registered 16 wins in just 20 games, posting a .929 SP and a 2.13 GAA. Futhermore, during that conquest, the Habs won ten overtime games in a row, a record that may well never be beaten. When the game went to overtime, Roy became invincible and rocked the kind of confidence that made his teammates feel like they too were untouchable.

In those playoffs, Roy even allowed himself to wink at Tomas Sandstrom after making a great save in the extra frame of the finals' fourth game. That wink was caught by many on TV and by photographers as well. The goaltender's foundation even made a T-shirt immortalizing the feat months later.

Unsurprisingly, Roy was once again named playoffs MVP in that quest for the Canadiens' 24th Stanley Cup, a fully deserved honor considering how close the wins had been.

Roy spent 12 years in Montreal racking up 289 wins in 551 games (which is kind of funny because that number is also his final career wins tally) good for third place behind Carey Price at 361 and Jacques Plante at 314. He finished his time in Montreal with a .904 SP and a 2.78 GAA.

While his time in Montreal ended with a complete disaster when he was left out to dry in net by rookie coach Mario Tremblay and told team president Ronald Corey that he had played his last game in Montreal, the reconciliation was inevitable. In 2008, Saint-Patrick came home when the Habs retired his number and started his speech with:

Tonight, I'm coming home.

The former goalie even patched things up with Tremblay in 2021, making fun of the incident in an Uber Eats commercial.

After being traded from the Canadiens to the Avalanche, the goaltender led the Colorado outfit to the franchise's first two Stanley Cups, winning the Conn Smythe trophy in their second conquest in 2001. Roy is the only player to have claimed the playoffs MVP trophy with two different teams, to have won it three times and to have done so in three different decades. Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby, Bobby Orr and Bernie Parent all won the Conn Smythe twice, but none of them could capture a third one.

Canadiens' Goalie Week: Carey Price
Canadiens' Goalie Week: Jose Theodore

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