By Arthur Staple (The Athletic)
EAST MEADOW, N.Y. — Anthony Duclair had his future planned out. As a rising teenage hockey talent in Montreal, he had an eye toward attending college in the U.S. The University of Michigan was his choice, even at 15.
Patrick Roy had other ideas. The retired Hall of Fame goalie was already six years into his do-everything role with the Québec Remparts — owner, general manager and head coach — and took Duclair in the third round of the 2011 QMJHL draft.
Then Roy and Duclair sat down to talk.
“I had told two other (QMJHL) teams I was going to college, but he still drafted me,” Duclair remembers. “We went over there to have a meeting with them and make a decision. I was 15, turning 16. It’s tough. How do you say no to Patrick Roy?”
So Duclair chucked his college dreams and made the three-hour journey to Québec City. “Obviously, it was a great decision,” he says.
Not everyone who played for Roy during his first stint coaching in the Canadian junior ranks has the same warm feelings. Even those players who enjoyed playing for Roy, like Duclair and Adam Erne, who came up from Connecticut as a heralded young player and stayed with the Roys for his first few months in Québec, will tell you Roy was tough. He was demanding.
He was, and always will be, Patrick Roy. Playing for one of the greatest to ever come out of Québec and Canada, especially in the early 2010s, just a decade removed from his last Stanley Cup championship and Conn Smythe Trophy with the Colorado Avalanche, was already a bit of a burden for those teenagers. Add in Roy’s fiery temperament and intense approach to coaching those kids, and some of the feelings still linger.
“I think the best way I can put it is that the past is in the past for me,” says Louis Domingue, who played for Roy from 2009 to 2012. “He was very, very hard on me.”
The biggest change for Roy from his first stint coaching Québec, from 2005 to ’13, to now, in his second go-round as an NHL coach, is a simple one, he says.
“Different role,” Roy says. “I was there to help them achieve their dream — not only as a hockey player but whatever they wanted to do. We had guys that became doctors, some became lawyers, dentists, agents, whatever. My role was to push them and really make them understand what is the journey of a professional — not just professional hockey player but a professional in the world. I said to them, ‘A lot of times, you might not like me today, but you might like me, love me, along the way.’ That’s what I was there for.”
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