MONTREAL — Patrick Roy knows what awaits him at the Bell Center, so the Islanders were on the ice Wednesday to avoid being on the ice Thursday morning.
In this city on the banks of the St. Lawrence River, hockey is as much a part of the lifeblood as the French language, and the new Islanders coach is something of a folk hero.
His return to the NHL was such a hot topic in these parts that, rather than wait for the Islanders to come to Montreal just three games into Roy's tenure, a slew of French-Canadian reporters watched his debut on Sunday. He headed to Long Island to fight. .
Roy also knows better than anyone that he will be walking into the House of Madness on Thursday night.
“I just don’t want to be a distraction,” he said Wednesday. “There will be no morning skate in Montreal and the players are going to stay in hotels and focus. And I don't want it to be about me. I want it to be about the Islanders.
“We go there to win hockey games. We don't go there to win for the coach, we go for the team. That's why we don't want you to go skate. They will ask questions about me and say this and that. I don't need this and [the team doesn’t] That's what I need. ”
Wonderful sensibility.
But the chances that Wednesday won't be about Roy are about as likely as the Expos winning the 2024 World Series.
C'est la vie.
“He's the king,” Jean-Gabriel Pageau told the Post about Roy's status in Montreal. He was a Conn Smythe Trophy winner in 1986 and 1993 with the championship Canadiens teams. “I think everywhere he goes, the red carpet is rolled out for him. A lot of my friends, my parents, he's a hero for a generation.
“He's a winner, he's a competitor, he's a Hall of Famer. He deserves all the attention he's getting right now and I'm sure he'll have a great moment off the bench when we play against Montreal. ing”
Samuel Bolduc, from nearby Laval, is too young to have ever seen Roy play.
But there's no doubt he's heard enough stories and seen the highlights to understand what Roy means to this city. All he had to do was look up at his center rafters, where Roy's number 33 was hanging.
When news broke Sunday that Bolduc would be taking the Islanders job, he received emails from “almost every friend and family member” asking if it was true.
“The people there just love him,” Bolduc told the Post. “His father talked so much about him, how great of a person he was.”
There are two things to worry about against a team in Montreal that the Islanders should theoretically beat. However, they have already lost at the Bell Center this season.
The Isles opened Wednesday at the Metropolitan tied for fourth place with the Devils and two points out of first place in the wild-card spot.
Roy wants to fast forward until after the All-Star break. Around that time, the excitement surrounding his appointment will begin to subside.
But for now, and never after Thursday, he will be coaching in the circus.
“As a group, we have to find a way to make sure we step up with our leaders,” Roy said. “We're going to use that goal to try and be a better hockey team.'' I went into the dressing room after the second period. [of Tuesday’s 3-2 loss to Vegas] And now we have to regroup and talk about it, and then get back to the game. At one point in that game we were starting to fly through the zone and couldn't work as a five-man unit to stay in the zone.
“Those are things that I honestly think are the next steps. And obviously, we're slowly starting to talk about it and hopefully after the All-Star break we can work on this more and get the structure and mindset set.”
