Colorado Avalanche Final Word on Why Patrick Roy Left

With almost a year’s distance for perspective, let’s look at why Patrick Roy really left the Colorado Avalanche.

I’ve been forecasting for a while that I’d be doing a Colorado Avalanche series on, essentially, why Patrick Roy was right. To be clear, this was inspired by a reader — I simply decided to run with it in my blogger way.

Let’s start by clearing up some timing. Patrick Roy resigned on August 11, 2016. The Colorado Avalanche’s first preseason game was September 27. Training camp began on Thursday, September 22.

That means Roy resigned a full six weeks before the start of training camp. I don’t consider six weeks “just before” training camp. Six weeks is plenty of time to find an NHL coach.

GM Joe Sakic hired Jared Bednar on August 25, two weeks after Roy’s resignation. Bednar had never coached or been an assistant coach for an NHL team — he’d never played in an NHL game either. The timing and the candidate were all on Joe Sakic. He interviewed candidates with NHL experience — including Stanley Cup experience. He presumably could have had them in the Pepsi Center front offices by August 15.

Because here’s where I get into the opinion part of the post. All of the above is fact. Here’s my opinion: Joe Sakic forced out Patrick Roy. Therefore, he should have had head coach candidates in mind before Roy officially resigned.

Patrick Roy’s Role with the Team

The team courted Patrick Roy. Almost from the time Roy retired in 2003, the team started offering him head coach or general manager positions. He turned them down in the beginning because he didn’t have any experience. Later, he wanted to keep coaching his sons in the QMJHL as head coach (and owner and GM) of the Quebec Remparts.

Finally, Joe Sakic, who’d been named executive vice president of hockey operations, and team president Josh Kroenke met Patrick Roy at his favorite local golf course, the Bear’s Club, in Florida. They offered him the head coaching position with a promise that he’d serve as the vice president of hockey operations.

Basically, while their titles changed through the years, the understanding was that Joe Sakic would help Patrick Roy build a team according to a shared vision. Roy would be the front-and-center guy as head coach, giving interviews practically every day during the season. Sakic would be the behind-the-scenes guy.

In that time, the shared vision was to build a big, gritty, speedy team with great skill. They’d build according to a combination of old style — mixing veterans with young bucks — and new style — emphasis on speed and changing systems. They were unofficially patterning the team after contenders like the Anaheim Ducks and LA Kings.

Sakic and Roy are both Hall of Fame players. They have brilliant hockey minds. Together they eschewed advanced stats. Many fans and reporters called them old fashioned for that. However, I’ve long maintained that because of their brilliant hockey vision, they see the game on so many different levels that advanced stats can’t predict.

Anyway, Patrick Roy declared in the first season what his intentions were: to bring a Stanley Cup attitude back to Colorado. They were going to build around a talented group of youngsters — Gabriel Landeskog, Matt Duchene, Erik Johnson, Ryan O’Reilly and the newly-drafted Nathan MacKinnon.

The team was not in a rebuild. They were seeking relevancy from the get-go. The understanding was that Sakic and Roy simply had to augment the core with the right cast of supporting players.

Patrick Roy continued forth with that vision. I believe that, until he started thinking about resignation, he believed the team could be relevant with its existing core and the proper supporting cast. It was Joe Sakic who lost faith.

Joe Sakic Changes Course

Patrick Roy had general manager (and owner) experience from his eight years with the Quebec Remparts. That’s largely why Kroenke and Sakic expanded his duties beyond that of traditional head coaches. He was supposed to have a big say in player personnel.

Joe Sakic was the GM, though, so technically he had the final say. And for some reason he lost faith in the vision that he and Roy had crafted together. He started marshaling forces around himself, hiring a new assistant GM, Chris MacFarland, who started taking over some of Patrick Roy’s duties.

Sakic also deviated from the vision. He drafted an undersized center, Tyson Jost, when a center more in the Avalanche mold of the time, Logan Brown, was still available at the #10 slot.

What’s more, he started making moves like the team was in a rebuild rather than striving for relevancy. He picked up some cheap role players in free agency rather than go after Roy’s preferred candidate, Alexander Radulov (18 goals, 36 assists with the Montreal Canadiens).

He also traded away one of Patrick Roy’s favorite defensemen, Nick Holden, essentially just to get rid of him. Colorado got a fourth round pick back for him.

Sakic took undersized defenseman Tyson Barrie to arbitration then signed him to a fat contract (four years with an annual cap hit of $5.5 million). While Roy valued Barrie, he wasn’t in the Avalanche mold, and he’s a definite defensive liability.

And then Joe Sakic announced that Patrick Roy wouldn’t be having as much say in team management — he’d be focusing on coaching. This was not the agreement.

Patrick Roy and Joe Sakic were supposed to be working together to build a team to a shared vision. Sakic broke faith with that agreement. So, when Roy decided to resign, he did so by observing the following, from his PR statement:

“I have thought long and hard over the course of the summer about how I might improve this team to give it the depth it needs and bring it to a higher level. To achieve this, the vision of the coach and VP-Hockey Operations needs to be perfectly aligned with that of the organization. He must also have a say in the decisions that impact the team’s performance. These conditions are not currently met.”

I repeat: Sakic and Roy were supposed to be working together to build the Colorado Avalanche to a shared vision. Sakic changed the plan. He broke faith with Patrick Roy.

Now, think about it this way — how do you think Patrick Roy, he of the immense ego, the Stanley Cup rings in his ears, the collapsed partition — how was that man supposed to take the news that he’d been demoted, he’d still have to answer for team decisions, but the Avs were no longer on the relevancy track?

Do you really expect a man like Patrick Roy to accept that? Now imagine Joe Sakic, who’s known Roy for decades. Do you think Sakic really expected Roy to accept what amounts to a patsy role?

No. He knew what he was doing. In the battle of egos, Sakic out-egoed the egotistical Patrick Roy.