Colorado Avalanche: Patrick Roy Used To Being The Best

Patrick Roy as a coach for the Colorado Avalanche is the same person Patrick Roy was as a player – extremely sure of his own abilities.

I’ve read all the reaction I can to Patrick Roy’s resignation as coach of the Colorado Avalanche, and it’s shocked me how many people seem to have forgotten who Patrick Roy was when he played.

Yes, he was arguably the best goalie of all time, and yes, he was fanatical about winning, but he was also extremely confident when it came to just how good a player he was.

Many of the comments I’ve read have talked about Roy leaving because he wanted to win and didn’t think the team was making the right decisions to do that.

That may be true, but I don’t think that was the core issue. The issue is that Patrick Roy is used to being the very best, and was no longer being treated like it.

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As a player, Roy’s opinion of himself was justified because he was so unbelievably talented. It’s okay to have a very high opinion of yourself if you can back it up. And Roy backed it up big time.

As a coach though, he was average at best. He introduced a few new ideas into the NHL, but his schemes were generally rather rudimentary.

But it’s not as if Roy developed a sense of modesty around his lack of elite coaching talent. His quotes often displayed the confidence we all knew and loved when he was a player.

So when the time came that he had an idea of how to fix the team, and Sakic and the rest of management disagreed, Roy couldn’t handle it. It was his way or the highway.

Don’t get me wrong though. I have always been a Roy fan, and felt that he was one day going to be an excellent coach.

But maybe I was wrong. Maybe Roy really is inflexible and will never change his methods to suit the modern NHL, where leading the league in blocked shots is not an ideal defensive strategy.

In any case, we may never know, and it will be up to whoever the new coach is (please not Bob Hartley!) to institute a scheme that works with the current roster.

I obviously don’t think this resignation reflects well on Roy as a person, but I also want to defend him on one point – the timing.

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Many commentators seem to be focusing on how the timing of the resignation leaves the Avs in a tough spot with only a month to go before training camp.

This is true, but I think it makes perfect sense from Roy’s perspective and it’s hard to blame him.

I suspect that Roy wanted the Avs to make some major offseason moves like trading Barrie, Duchene and/or Landeskog and then making a big free agent signing.

If that’s the case, Roy didn’t know that his ideas were completely rejected until Barrie was signed to his current deal. Up until that point it was still a very real possibility that Barrie would be traded.

So once Barrie was signed and Sakic made it clear that no other moves were coming, Roy was faced with a decision. He could go into the season with a team built in a manner he did not approve of, or he could quit. He took just under two weeks to think about it, and decided to quit.

So people complaining that Roy should have quit sooner so the Avs could have had a shot at Bruce Boudreau don’t understand what was going on.

At the beginning of the offseason, there was still a chance that Roy’s ideas would win out and the changes he thought should be made would be made. Until he knew for sure, it made no sense for him to quit.

Related Story: Colorado Avalanche: Kevin Dineen as Patrick Roy’s Replacement

So don’t criticize Roy over the timing of his resignation. In the end, it’s just about who he is and has always been. What made him great as a player also forced him to resign as a coach.