Chapter 9: The Last Game I Play….

The 94-95 season found the NHL in turmoil with the players and management at odds with each other resulting in a player lockout that ended up taking away half of the NHL season before it was finally resolved. It put a lot of stress upon players, which in turn put a lot of stress upon their families and also was not very endearing to the fans.

The Montreal Canadiens and Patrick just did not find their footing as they began their shortened season. Patrick’s goaltending was less than stellar, the defensive play of the team was also under par and nothing seemed to work for them. As the playoffs drew ever closer and it became more obvious that they could possibly MISS the playoffs, a phrase unheard of at that time in the Montreal vocabulary, the team began to buckle under the stress. On top of that a string of dirty rumors and domestic plotlines that mimicked a bad soap series wore down on the team and it resulted in a fist fight between Patrick Roy and his teammate, Defensemen Mathieu Schneider in the locker room and between periods of a hockey game. The official cause of the altercation was “differences over defensive issues” and within days Schneider was traded to the New York Islanders.

Montreal Coach Jacques Demers simply told his team to let the memory of the fight slide from their minds and to concentrate on the ice. The end result was the Canadiens missing the playoffs for the first time in decades.

“People demand the Stanley Cup every year,” a morose Patrick Roy said of the forgettable season. “But it’s not realistic. I could never believe that The Canadiens would miss the playoffs. But we were so bad on the road that you can’t expect to make the playoffs. Maybe we’re not as good as people think. It’s the first time since juniors that I’ve been through this. It’s a new experience and I hope I’ll gain from it.”

Early into the 95-96 season, Jacques Demers was fired as head coach of the Montreal Canadiens and he was replaced with Patrick Roy’s former teammate, Mario Tremblay. Patrick considered Demers a close friend of his and as for Tremblay, a man with no coaching experience and someone with whom Patrick had not gotten along very well with, Patrick was not happy. “When I first heard the news I thought it was a joke,” Patrick said bluntly, “I had to take a cold shower.”

Previously working as a broadcaster for the Canadiens, Tremblay was often critical of Patrick Roy’s personality and play. Roy of course, had to have been aware of that and not too pleased with it. The two of them also had to remember their rocky past together and all in all, it seems that the end result to this chapter should have been painfully obvious.

Tremblay was quite pleased to assume coaching duties in the organization and he had his agenda clearly in mind when he first addressed the team. Perhaps he was nervous to be taking this job and to be once again in the Forum locker room as someone who belonged there, for whatever reason he decided to address the team in English. English had fast taken over as the official language of the NHL and Mario wanted to make a good impression but he stumbled badly as he tried to speak it.

Patrick, no doubt remembered all the times he had been harassed by Mario when he was a rookie about not speaking English and he laughed.

Tremblay glared at Roy, “What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Nothing against you,” Patrick replied with a smile, “Just the way you talk.”

Tremblay was livid.

Patrick, for his part, said of that day, “I was smiling with my head down. It was not a big laugh like Ha Ha Ha. I was looking at Keaner (Mike Keane) and his hair was so red and I kinda grinned, and Mario went right at me.”

There was no peace between the two men after that but it was not obvious to the world. Although the team was winless at the beginning of the season, under Mario Tremblay they seemed to be doing well. Patrick Roy was on an 11-0-2 unbeaten streak when he showed up to the Forum on December 2, 1995.

There are of course team rules when it concerns what time one should arrive to practice, and to play and on that night, Canadiens’ star forward Vincent Damphousse was nowhere to be found. Damphousse finally arrive ten minutes before warmup.

“When Vinnie came in,” Roy said, “Mario who had been acting all pissed off, patted him on the shoulder. On my way to the bathroom I said to Mario, ‘If it had been Yves Sarault, would he playing tonight?”

For Tremblay, a player who had his hey day under the coaching hand of Scotty Bowman, that was the last straw as far as it concerned Roy’s inability to fully see a coach as an authority figure. The one thing that annoyed Mario about Patrick Roy was Roy’s intense curiosity and hands on approach to the duties a Captain served and a Coach. Perhaps the rest of the team was accustomed to Patrick having his say every night, suggesting game plans, organizing his own schedules but Tremblay wasn’t.

"Hockey is an emotional game, and I'm a player who just cannot play with things on my mind." Patrick Roy has said of his mindset on the ice. The statement became an obvious one as the Canadiens left the first period of their game that night against the Detroit Red Wings down 5-1.

Of course it was stunning to the Montreal crowd to see that their star goalie had allowed so many goals in one period and they showed their displeasure by booing. What was even more stunning for them was to see Patrick suited up and in net to start the second period.

It’s customary when a goaltender has allowed so many goals in such a short amount of time to be pulled and replaced. Even if it is not the goaltender’s fault that the game has gotten out of hand, or if it is and it seems too late to mount any sort of real comeback, the act of replacing the goaltender often jolts a team into playing better. So when Patrick Roy was starting the second period when he had not played well enough to deserve doing so, it was obvious that Tremblay was setting to teach him a lesson in humility he would never forget. Patrick was in no mood to cooperate with that, and the Red Wings were more than happy to take advantage.

The Red Wings scored again, and then again within the first two minutes of the second period. For Patrick, making even a routine save drew sarcastic cheers from the crowd. Patrick’s anger no longer was solely on Tremblay, it began to bleed onto the fans as well. Roy began to mock the fans, raising his hands at them and yelling.

Tremblay later told reporters that at 7-1for Detroit he thought Montreal still was “in the game” and that Patrick could still save them. Roy sparred and warred with the fans, allowed two more goals and finally with the score being 9-1 Tremblay gave the go to pull Patrick. As Roy left the ice, he pulled off his mask and traded intense glares with Mario as he made his way to the backup goaltender’s stool, he then turned and glared at Tremblay again.

The Canadiens’ bench was located at section 105 and traditionally there has never been any glass separating the fans from the players there so the Montreal Management can experience the full feel of the game as they sat there. Patrick Roy leaned through this partition and growled to team president Ronald Corey, “This is the last game I play for Montreal.” He then glared at Tremblay and screamed, “T’as compris stie?” (Did you understand G-d D----t?)

Patrick then sat on the bench, his face a pale mask of shock and anger. His pride, his talent, his relationship with his team and his fans had all been juggled and in one phrase he had dropped and shattered them on the floor. He kept shaking his head and rolling his eyes, no doubt aware of his own heart, knew it was broken, and knew that his pride would never allow him to recant a word of what he had said.

After the period was over Roy and Tremblay had a screaming match in the locker room. The next day he missed a team practice and meeting and was suspended by Montreal GM Ronald Corey. The rumor was that Roy was going to be traded.