DENVER — Patrick Roy had done the hard part, looking inward and shifting his methods, going back to junior hockey with the Quebec Remparts and proving he could still win there. This was everything in his power to prove, after a shock resignation ended his tenure coaching the Avalanche in 2016, that he could still one day coach in the NHL.
What came next was, arguably, harder, because Roy could only take on a role of passivity. He waited.
After winning the Memorial Cup with the Remparts in 2023, Roy decamped to Florida, deciding to leave the QMJHL. He was getting more calls from NHL teams and had some interviews. None worked out. He knew it was an acute possibility that his only future would be on the golf course.
“I wasn’t sure if I was going to be back in the game,” Roy told The Post ahead of returning to Denver for the first time as head coach of the Islanders. “When I made my decision to resign in Colorado, I kinda knew about that, that that might be a possibility. But I guess my thoughts — I never thought it would be that long.”
The specter of Roy coaching again in Denver, where he won two of his four Stanley Cup titles as a player, won’t quite match that of his first game back in Montreal, when the Canadiens interspersed a photo slideshow of Roy with O Canada — literally using their franchise legend as a stand-in for country — but Monday’s return will be watched across hockey nonetheless.
Roy came into Denver like a thunderclap, getting a young Avalanche team which had gone 16-25-7 in a lockout-shortened season a year prior to win 52 games and make the playoffs in his first season. He left the same way three years later a month before training camp, with that first season having been a high watermark, releasing a statement citing a lack of alignment with general manager Joe Sakic.
That left a bad taste, not just in Colorado but across the NHL. Roy knows it.
The ensuing years, two without coaching at all before spending the next four back in Quebec with the Remparts, forced him to look hard in the mirror.
“I’m glad it happened that way,” Roy said. “Because I think it makes me the coach I am today and I certainly love the fact that I learned so much out of this in a way.
“I think I didn’t respect the position enough in the past. I took a lot of things for granted and shame on me for being like this. But at the same time, what happened in those seven years made me realize a lot of things. And the passion that I had for the game, I’m having for the game, I think it was a good thing it happened.”
Matt Duchene, the leading scorer on that 2013-14 Avalanche team and a key part of the franchise throughout Roy’s time there, seems a little taken aback when these words are relayed to him.
“We’re always a rookie again at something in life,” Duchene told The Post. “I admire him saying that, because it shows he wants to learn and get better. That’s why he had such a successful career as a goaltender. He’s a competitive guy who wants to be the best and stops at nothing. Him getting better and better over the course of time wouldn’t surprise me at all.”
Roy did change — those who worked with him in Quebec can speak to it firsthand — learning to make better use of his intensity and passion, rather than channeling it endlessly and letting everyone else get caught in the storm.
“Very humble situation,” Roy said. “But at the same time, it helps you to realize things and accept them. Sometimes you need to put your ego aside and look at yourself in the mirror and realize there’s things that need to be different if you want to be back in the game.”
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But that was never any guarantee that an NHL GM would put their neck on the line to hire him again.
A year ago, the hiring cycle came and went. Roy was ready to keep playing golf for the foreseeable future, but there was never any question he would jump if a chance was offered.
That’s just what he did when Lou Lamoriello called.
Now he’s back in Denver again, full circle, grateful for the chance he’s gotten.
“Means a lot,” Roy said. “Because I’m doing it by passion. I’m doing it because I love the game. I’m doing it because I want to win the Stanley Cup. That’s why I wanted to continue to do this.
“I realized that if I really love the coaching part of the game and being able to work every day and help the players and help our team to grow and be better with a group of coaches, I could not ask for any better situation.”
