It's hard not to see Patrick Roy return to the NHL as a coach next season, writes Adam Proteau.
When Patrick Roy led the QMJHL Quebec Remparts to a Memorial Cup championship last week, he underscored how successful he is at virtually everything hockey-related he does. Now that he's indicated an interest in coaching in the NHL again, he should be given that chance.
The Memorial Cup win was the second of his coaching career – the first came in his first season as Remparts coach in 2005-06 – and it was another laurel in an on-and-off-ice performance that was full of them.
Consider: Roy has won at almost every level he’s ever played or coached at. As a young player, he won a Calder Cup as an AHL champion with Sherbrooke in 1984-85. In his first NHL season the following year, the 20-year-old led his Montreal Canadiens team to a Stanley Cup – the first of four Cups he’d win as a player – and he earned the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, the first of three Conn Smythes he’d capture. No other player in league history has won three Conn Smythes.
But wait, there’s more. Much more.
In 18 full seasons as a goalie, Roy won three Vezina Trophies as the NHL’s top goaltender and a whopping five William Jennings Trophies as the goalie who surrendered the fewest amount of regular-season goals. He also was named to the league’s first all-star team four different times in three different decades.
In his first of three seasons as an NHL coach, he won the Jack Adams Award as the league’s best bench boss, and this past season, he guided the Remparts to a Gilles-Courteau Trophy win as the QMJHL champion. And in 2021, he won the Maurice Filion Trophy as the QMJHL’s top GM.
How can you not be astonished by Roy’s achievements? We all know by now how difficult it is just to win championships as a player, let alone winning as a player as well as a coach and GM. Many superstar NHLers try their hand at coaching and fail miserably. Some succeed as NHL coaches but not as GMs, or vice-versa. But Roy has excelled at all aspects of the game. The only reason he’s not a member of the Triple-Gold Club – as a player who’s won a Cup, an Olympic gold medal and an IIHF World Championship gold medal – is because he never was out of the playoff mix in the NHL and because he played in just one Olympic Games.
The reason Roy hasn’t returned to the NHL coaching picture is, by his own admission, his own fault. After his third season coaching the Colorado Avalanche, Roy stepped down from the position (as well as his role as VP of hockey operations) due to a power battle with former on-ice Avs teammate Joe Sakic. Roy’s aspirations have made him radioactive to GMs who fear he might try and end-run around them and take their jobs, but Roy has acknowledged the mistake he made with the Avalanche, and it’s very likely he would take another NHL coaching job under the full awareness that’s the only job he’d be taking with a team.
But really, if you were an NHL GM searching desperately for a coach who is a proven commodity as a winner, why wouldn’t you hire Roy? All the guy does is win games and awards, no matter what job he takes on. He’s undoubtedly one of the greatest players of all time, but he’s also arguably one of the top-three all-around high-impact hockey minds of all time. He’s certainly not perfect, but nobody is.
In the 2004 book this writer co-authored with former THN senior writer Ken Campbell, The Top 60 Since 1967, Roy was voted as the fifth-best player in the post-expansion-era NHL. But he’s done so much more since then. And his latest victory makes it all the more clear – Roy has had more impact, more often, than just about any hockey figure. If he does coach in the NHL again, the team that hires him will likely greatly benefit from his unmatched successes in every corner of the game.