As Canadians watch their countrymen (and women) compete in the Paris Olympics, we take a look at how former Montreal Canadiens fared in various Olympics Games. Today we recall Patrick Roy's tourney at the 1998 Nagano Olympics.
To this day, Patrick Roy remains the only player to win the Conn Smythe Trophy three times, the only one to do it in three different decades and the only one to do it with two different teams. In regular season play, he won five William M. Jennings Trophies, three Vezina Trophies and, as a coach, the Jack Adams Trophy. That was enough hardware to make the goaltender a legend.
For all those NHL trophies though, the man who many called the best clutch player of all time has got no international medal. When the NHL players were first allowed to take part in the Olympics in 1998, Patrick Roy headed to Nagano like most of the best players in the world.
Team Canada's head coach for the tournament was Marc Crawford, who was also the Colorado Avalanche's head coach and he picked Roy, his NHL goaltender, to play each of the Canadians' six games. Meanwhile, the more than capable Martin Brodeur and Curtis Joseph were left to warm up the bench.
This was Roy's first foray on the international stage and even though he played very well and had a perfect record before meeting Dominik Hasek and the Czechs in the semifinal, he came up short. The masked men battled it out bravely in a 1-1 tie, but Hasek was flawless in the shootout while Roy surrendered a goal to Robert Reichel who propelled Czechia to the final. On the Canadian bench, Wayne Gretzky looked shellshocked as Crawford elected not to use him in the shootout, going with defenseman Raymond Bourque instead, a decision that seriously backfired.
Defeated, Team Canada couldn't recover in time for the Bronze medal game and lost their final game in Japan. Roy ended his tourney with a 4-2 record, 1.46 goals-against average and a .935 save percentage, but it wasn't enough to stop Dominik Hasek. The Czech goalie cleaned house trophies wise in the 1996-1997 NHL season, winning the Vezina and Hart Trophies, the Lester B. Pearson award and being named to the first all-star team. He was his country's star in the tournament guiding them to the gold medal.
Through no fault of his own, Roy was unable to secure a medal in what would turn out to be his only Olympics. Prior to the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, he declared he wasn't interested in representing his country. A decision Michel Roy, the goaltender's father and writer of his biography Winning and Nothing Else, explains as his son being convinced his fate was in the NHL and not on the international stage.
A baffling decision considering Roy had always shown great determination and will to win, but it might have also had something to do with the fact other Canadian goalies were starting to make ground on the once undisputed number one.
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