A/N: My official notes went kaput with my original computer so in this chapter, if there are some stats or facts that are slightly out of order (I’m working from my sloppy handwritten notes) I apologize.

Chapter 6: Trade Roy

The 1989/90 season began with Roy solidifying his position on the Montreal team and taking the bulk of the goaltending responsibilities on his shoulders. He played in 51 games that season to lead all goalies with 31 wins and was awarded with yet another Vezina Trophy. He didn’t seem all that out of form considering the season previous had seen him lose the Stanley Cup on home ice. Patrick’s dominance in net prompted the Canadiens’ to deal out Patrick’s goaltending partner Brian Hayward. A true back up goaltender was needed on the team.

Still the playoffs didn’t come through with a Stanley Cup or even another trip to the finals and the beginnings of discontent were beginning to go through Montreal fans. If their starting goaltender was so great, why did they only have one Stanley Cup to show for it?

On June 9^th, 1990, Patrick married his girlfriend Michele Piuze in a luxurious ceremony, at the time she was pregnant with their second child. So Patrick seemed set for the 1990-91 season with a wife, a budding family and the sole responsibility as goaltender of the Montreal Canadiens.

Early on in the season, however, Patrick was downed with a knee injury. He recovered and returned to the team in January against the Boston Bruins. In that game he was caught in between scrambling teammates and Bruins which resulted in a tear to his ankle ligament. Patrick healed at home, and was able to be present for the birth of his second son, Frederick on February 26, 1991.

Montreal, as could be imagined, was not playing outstanding in Patrick’s absence and this prompted Montreal Coach Pat Burns to refer to Patrick as “the Wayne Gretzky of Montreal”. Burns was stressing how important he saw Roy being to the team but to many fans, players, and the top of the organization, this comment only confirmed their suspicion that Burns was becoming less and less of a coach to the team and more lost in enamor with Patrick’s presence.

Patrick returned to the team in March only to fall again to an ankle injury. The result for Patrick was to be unprepared and rusty throughout the playoffs and the rest of the team followed suit. Again Patrick and the Habs had performed less than what was expected of them.

Pat Burns was fired after that season and replaced in the 1991-92 season with Jacques Demers. Management was hoping for a new spark from a new coach, someone that would inspire and push the team forward. Demers was more enamored with Roy than Burns was, however, and he was more than happy to let Patrick set his own schedule whether it be in practices or games, and have more than a goaltender’s usual say in how the team was run and coached. Although Demers fell under intense criticism for this, he still remains unapologetic about it.

“There are certain athletes, like Patrick, who are purebreds,” Demers says, “They’re intense. Winners. Guys I’ve coached like Steve Yzerman in Detroit… and Doug Gilmour in St. Louis, they’re not always easy to deal with… maybe Patrick would say something in the locker room the guys didn’t like, but I’d tell them to let it go. Patrick was also the guy who’d come back and win a game for us.”

Initially, this unusual coaching or non-coaching style that Demers brought to the team didn’t seem to pay off as Patrick fell into a horrible post-season to see Montreal quickly out of the playoffs.

By this time, the patience of Montreal fans was wearing thin. The popular rumor that summer was that perhaps Roy, who seemed out of fire, washed up would perhaps be dealt in a trade with the Quebec Nordiques to acquire disgruntled draft pick Eric Lindros. Perhaps what Montreal needed was a young flashy, power forward and not a presumptuous, quirky goalie.

Montreal management made no such move. Instead, Patrick was inked for the new season with a new contract worth a million dollars. At that time it was an enormous amount of money for a hockey player and it rivaled only Mario Lemieux’s pay check. The pressure was really on Roy now, and with the money he was being paid, he was expected to produce.

It just didn’t seem to go that way however. Game in and game out, Patrick seemed tense, slow, uncomfortable and ineffective. He was fast compiling one of the worst GAA’s since his rookie year and it was hard not to ignore the displeasure of everyone around him.

“You want everyone to be happy,” Patrick said of his poor performance. “I put lots of pressures on myself and I just couldn’t take it.”

Things seemed to go from bad to worse. The 1993 All Star game was being held in Montreal and Patrick was one of the main attractions. Here, was where Patrick could salvage his reputation and showcase his talents to the hockey world, and the Montreal fans were eager to see him do that. Patrick was anxious and eager to please but he crumpled under his own pressure allowing over 10 goals in the skills competition. Stunned, the Montreal crowd soundly booed Patrick’s poor performance. Patrick did come back in the All Star game itself to pitch a shut out for his period but by that point, it did little to help his case.

“It was probably the toughest time I had in my career,” Patrick said. “I was watching everything around me and I wasn’t watching myself. If people were mad at me, I was pissed off. If something bad was written about me, I was mad.”

That year, the trading card company, Upper Deck had based their advertising campaign on Patrick Roy Trading Cards. To supplement their campaign, they had billboards posted saying “Trade Roy” to encourage hockey card trading amongst collectors. The phrase caught on as a catch phrase amongst disgruntled fans on sports talk radio shows. Trade Roy and fast!

TBC