Last month, Patrick Roy surprisingly stepped down as head coach of the Colorado Avalanche. A fiery competitor to say the least, Roy coached the Avs for three years over which time the team progressively got worse in the standings. Colorado’s 82-point total in 2015-16 was 30 points worse than what they registered in Roy’s first season behind the bench.
Roy was often criticized in the online hockey community for running a system that lent itself to risk, didn’t result in favourable shot metrics and that he didn’t adapt to these problems. According to corsica.hockey, the Avalanche finished with by far the worst 5-on-5 CF% last season and were second-worst the year before.
But by all accounts, most of his players enjoyed playing for him.
On Wednesday, Matt Duchene talked with Mike Zeisberger of the Toronto Sun about Roy and his departure. Duchene said that Roy called him shortly after making the announcement that he was stepping down from the Avalanche. Duchene said it “meant a lot” to him that Roy called right away and it showed him what Roy thought hof him as a player and a person.
“I learned a lot from him,” Duchene said. “He said he enjoyed coaching me. That was great to hear from one of my heroes as a kid.
“That’s the end of that chapter and it ended on a great note for him and I. There was never any problems there.”
Duchene’s proclamation that there weren’t any problems between him and Roy may surprise some fans who were paying attention to the team late in the season. In early April, the Avalanche were on another slide and well on their way to losing their third game in a row and fifth in six games. Trailing Minnesota 4-0 at the time, Matt Duchene scored his 30th goal of the season and followed it with an excited celebration.
After the game, Roy was not pleased and he lashed out at Duchene to the media.
“The thing I have a hard time [with] is the reaction of Dutchy after he scores,” Roy told reporters. “It’s a 4-0 goal. Big cheer. Are you kidding me? What is that? It’s not the reflect we want from our guys. Not at all.”
But Duchene said Wednesday that he understood exactly where Roy was coming from and didn’t hold it against him at all.
“I had just come off an injury,” Duchene told Zeisberger. “There were a lot of emotions toward the game that night. Just a quick moment of excitement. Didn’t even register that it was my 30th in my head. I reacted and I immediately felt terrible about it because I knew how it looked. It didn’t look the way I meant it to. He blasted me in the media about it.
“At the end of the day it wasn’t anything against me. He was just trying to set a precedent for the team and make an example of me. He expected me to be a leader and at that moment I let him down. We had a great chat the next day and right then everything was fine. It was blown out of proportion in the media. It was really nothing after that.”
Duchene also talked about back in 2013 when he got off to a slow start to the season and it looked as though his chances of making Team Canada’s Olympic roster were slim. Roy sat down with Duchene for a video session, where Roy told him “I want you on that team and I want you on the top of your game.”
That had an impact on Duchene, who did turn his season around and made the Canadian roster after all.
“That meant a lot. It showed that he cared not just about the team but about me as an individual. That goes a long way sometimes.”
So while it certainly was time for Roy to move on — any other coach would have been on the hot seat in the same situation — it doesn’t appear that player relationships were a problem here.
