With the season winding down for the Colorado Avalanche, head coach Patrick Roy is on the warpath.
Earlier this week he called out Avs leading goal scorer Matt Duchene for celebrating his 30th goal in a loss. He blasted his core, calling them out for not providing enough leadership, and now he double downed on those asinine comments. Talking with NBC Sports, Roy said Colorado’s mindset needs to change and the club needs more character.
“My belief is our mindset needs to change,” he explained. “That’s the conversation I have with [Sakic] when we’re talking about ‘we need to be stronger mentally,’ and ‘we need to bring character players inside of this dressing room.’ That’s what we’ve been trying to do.
Roy has gone on and on about how the Avalanche need change, but he’s stressing intangibles. Leadership and character are fine, but let’s not pretend Roy isn’t doing a horrible job behind the bench. No amount of leadership or character is going to change that. There is a change that needs to happen – Roy needs to go. Roy has been doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
In the three year’s since Patrick Roy’s taken over the team, the club has been a mess defensively. Per Hockey Analysis, the club has been outshot at even strength every season under his reign with an average of -4.3 shots against per sixty minutes. To put that in perspective over the same span, the Edmonton Oilers are at -3.5. The Avalanche are also second in that span with a 44.8 Corsi for, behind the Buffalo Sabres who might be trying to be bad. The Avalanche haven’t. Roy has continued to ignore analytics or anything backing up his fixable issues and has preached that his team is on the right track.
DENVER, CO – MARCH 27: Head coach Patrick Roy of the Colorado Avalanche leads his team against the Vancouver Canucks at Pepsi Center on March 27, 2014 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)
Roy’s leash was created from a mirage. Colorado looked like a powerhouse in Roy’s first season, winning 52 games and the Central Division – which had the Colorado media fawning about how the former Avalanche goalie saved the team. Stats didn’t back up the team’s success, as they survived by luck, shooting a 8.77 percent from even strength while getting top-five goaltending. The Avalanche were bumped in the first round and the team hasn’t returned to the playoffs since.
Roy has led a decent roster to a total of 78 wins since his Jack Adams-winning season and has done a total rip-job behind the bench. If his name was Willie Desjardins or Paul Maurice, and he wasn’t linked to the Avalanche’s history, he’d be gone already. Roy has done an embarrassing job as coach.
Throwing his core under the bus is laughable. Sure, the team isn’t a title contender on paper, but he inherited a perfectly fine core of young players like Nathan Mackinnon, Tyson Barrie, Gabriel Landeskog, Ryan O’Reilly (now traded) and Matt Duchene and has done little with them. Those are five, dynamic young players who haven’t hit their peak. Yet, that’s not good enough for Roy. He needs more character. That’s not the man I’d want molding good young players.
Roy, per usual, is deflecting blame. Adding more leadership, character or veterans isn’t going to change the team’s result as long as he’s still in charge.
