Patrick Roy gives the New York Islanders visibility they had lost a long time ago. At the beginning of the week, Chantal Machabée contacted her counterparts in the New York organization to offer them the availability of the interview room at the Bell Center on the sidelines of Roy’s visit to Montreal tomorrow. The invitation surprised members of the Islanders’ public relations department.
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“Huh, why?” they asked.
Chantal explained to them that Patrick Roy in Montreal is big!
The Islanders finally informed him on Wednesday that they would not hold a morning skate on Thursday and that Roy would meet the media at 4:15 p.m. in the said room. It was predictable. Roy wanted to avoid his team’s locker room being overwhelmed by a sea of journalists in the morning.
During his first game at the helm of the Ialanders, last Sunday, against the Dallas Stars, there were some 20 journalists on site. You will say that it’s not much, but it’s a lot for this team these days. She was barely followed at home in recent years. And we didn’t see any New York media representatives at Islanders games in Montreal.
Six Quebec reporters made the trip to Elmont, a municipality on Long Island, for Roy’s debut with the Islanders. The platforms of Montreal Journal, of Quebec Journal and TVA Sports have exploded!
The last of the CH greats
Roy played his last game in the National Hockey League more than 20 years ago. His brilliant career made him a legend and the last great in Canadian history. Last summer, he gave his fellow citizens of the Old Capital a first conquest of the Memorial Cup since 2006.
He also has his legion of denigrators, but he remains true to himself and his convictions. He leaves no one indifferent.
We can expect the people to give him a warm ovation tomorrow evening.
The roof may rise!
The good years of Bossy
It’s going to be a change from what we’ve seen during the Islanders’ visits to Montreal for several decades.
In the 1980s, their visits to the Forum and the Colisée were part of the highlights of the hockey season in Montreal and Quebec. Fans were swooning for the goal-scoring machine that was Mike Bossy, a local guy who had also made crowds run across the province in the junior ranks.
The Islanders were quite a team. In addition to Bossy, they had four other future members of the hockey hall of fame in Denis Potvin, Bryan Trottier, Clark Gillies and Billy Smith, who delivered ax blows to opponents who ventured in front of his net.
Franco-Ontarian coach Al Arbor, who grew up in the mining region of Sudbury, like the legendary Toe Blake with the Canadiens, spoke with pleasure in French with Quebec journalists. Because he couldn’t remember all our names, he nicknamed us the Gonzagas.
“We French Canadians all have or know someone in our families named Gonzague,” he said.
He was really a nice guy, this Alger.
His wife wanted nothing to do with New York when Islanders general manager Bill Torrey offered him the coaching job. She and her husband agreed when Torrey, a native Montrealer who grew up a few blocks from the Forum during World War II, told them that the Islanders were based on the outskirts of Manhattan.
Both men also have their niche in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
These famous editions of the Islanders were the only ones, apart from those of the Canadian in the second half of the 1950s and 1970s, to win four consecutive Stanley Cups. In 1984, they participated in the final for a fifth consecutive year, but the Habs’ record of five conquests in a row was preserved.
The Edmonton Oilers began their dominance by ending that of the Islanders, winning five championships in seven years.
From the lineage of the Rocket and Flower
From there, the Islanders found themselves among the run-of-the-mill NHL teams, even downright bad at times.
For the moment, no one sees them aspiring to the Stanley Cup… except perhaps Roy, who aims for the top wherever he goes. He has been his usual self since his arrival on Long Island.
His new players discover an emotional and active coach who brings them back to order when he deems it necessary, but who also multiplies the encouragement.
The 58-year-old is made of one piece. He has the fault of his qualities; he is whole. He is made from the same mold as Maurice Richard and Guy Lafleur in this regard.
We like that in Quebec.
With him, there have never been and never will be any gray areas.