Can we all agree hiring Patrick Roy would be a terrible idea for the Habs?
If the Canadiens wanted their former legendary goalie running their hockey operations, they should have handed him, not Jeff Gorton, the keys to the kingdom
From starting with an awkward, but valiant, attempt at French to talking about how he still stinks after 30 years of playing golf, Jeff Gorton hit all the right notes in his opening news conference Friday after being named vice-president, hockey operations for the Montreal Canadiens. By virtue of the fact that the Canadiens are such a mess and he’s a credible hockey person, Gorton has some currency here, not unlike what Steve Yzerman had when he took over the Detroit Red Wings in 2019. He’d best use it wisely.
Which brings us to the question of Patrick Roy. We all agree that if Gorton uses the first arrow in his quiver to hire the former goaltending legend, that would be a terrible idea, right? Roy recently lobbied for the GM job when asked about whether or not he is interested. “What would they have to lose by giving me the chance and seeing what I can do with this club?” Roy recently said in French.
The Canadiens are not looking for the next president of their alumni association here. This is, after Gorton, the second-most important hockey job in the organization. The future of the on-ice product lies in Gorton and his ability to find someone who can both communicate his vision to the fan base and work with him to meet his goals of improving player development and beefing up the Canadiens’ analytics department. That is not to say that Roy wouldn’t be a candidate to run the Canadiens’, or any other team’s, hockey operations department. He has displayed, both as a junior hockey operator and an NHL coach, that he has a very keen hockey mind. But hiring Roy and putting him in a role where he has to answer to anyone is a recipe for disaster. Until 2014 when Quebecor bought the Quebec Remparts for about $25 million, Roy was part-owner, GM and coach of the team. That was by design. Roy needs to be the alpha male in order to succeed.
Which is why, if the Canadiens were interested in Roy, they should have handed him the keys to the kingdom immediately. It might have been a brilliant move, but the risk of it ending very badly would have been very high. The Canadiens could have branded it as Roy’s triumphant return and, hey, at least it would have been eventful. But that door closed the moment they hired Gorton and put him at the top of the hockey operations executive structure. Roy does not share the sandbox with others and doesn’t exactly have a healthy respect for authority.
Hey, it has served him well. He went from being a third-round pick to a Hall of Famer in part because of his stubborn self-confidence. He hand-delivered the Canadiens two Stanley Cups they had no business winning because he figuratively took his teammates on his back. Roy is a born leader, but when he’s not in the position to get exactly what he wants, the results are not good. “Listen, anyone who has ever been in a hockey room has has some ‘F-you’ fights about what to do,” Gorton said.
Yeah, but you don’t want to have them every day. Because that would be exhausting.
One of the attributes most frequently attributed to Roy is his passion. It’s overrated, not because it’s not important, but it’s a trait shared by virtually everyone who is involved in the game. Gorton talked about how things were thrown around his house in Melrose, Mass., and how the Canadiens broke his 10-year-old heart in when they took advantage of a too-many-men-on-the-ice penalty to tie Game 7, then won it in overtime to defeat the Bruins in the semifinal. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in more than three decades in this game, it’s that everybody who invests their lives into working for an NHL organization has a deep passion for the game running through his or her veins. It’s impossible to carry on without it and just because others don’t display it the same way Roy does doesn’t mean they don’t have it.
If the Canadiens are looking for a former great goaltender who meets their bilingual requirement, they can find one in Roberto Luongo, who has been a special assistant to the GM in Florida for the past three seasons and was GM of Canada’s championship team in the World Championship last summer. You want passion? Well, talk to Mathieu Darche, a guy with a Stanley Cup pedigree who went from playing Canadian University hockey to the NHL, scratching and clawing for each one of the 250 games in which he appeared. Or Daniel Briere, who thrived in the best league in the world despite being and undersized guy with sub-par mobility who was once waived by the Phoenix Coyotes. Both of them are former Habs players as well.
When asked about Roy, Gorton said all the right things. He admires Roy’s passion for the game and said he will not rule anyone out at this point. When pressed to give an over-under, he acknowledged that a new GM won’t be in place until after Christmas. He committed to Dominique Ducharme as the Canadiens coach for the rest of this season. Now it is time for Gorton to really start to dig in on the organization and determine what needs to be done. The Canadiens have more players on long-term deals than any other team in the NHL and they’re trending downward. Spiralling, actually.
The Canadiens need a new GM with passion. No doubt about that. But they also need one who will take a measured approach and Patrick Roy simply is not that guy.