Ottawa Senators should avoid hiring Patrick Roy as head coach

The Ottawa Senators still need to find a head coach. They should stay away from Patrick Roy, who they have reportedly expressed interest in.

Surprising news came out of the circus that is the Ottawa Senators organization over this weekend that the team is considering Patrick Roy as the team’s new head coach. Roy is considered to be one of the best NHL goaltenders of all time. He has considerable coaching experience at the junior hockey level, plus experience at the NHL with the Colorado Avalanche.

Unfortunately for the Senators, they did not learn from Colorado’s mistakes. Roy’s tenure as an NHL coach is an interesting one. He signed on to coach his former NHL team in 2014, and one of his first order of business was the head-turning choice of drafting forward Nathan MacKinnon over defenseman Seth Jones when the Avalanche were a team in drastic need of a defense upgrade.

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The move obviously paid off, as Colorado would make the postseason for the first team that season and MacKinnon has since emerged into an NHL superstar. The honeymoon between Roy and Colorado was short-lived, as after that one playoff season, the Avalanche would miss in the next two seasons before Roy resigned abruptly, citing that he felt he didn’t have enough control over player personnel decisions.

Colorado would bottom out that season, finishing dead last in the NHL with 48 points. The next season they would rebound, making the playoffs as a wild card team with another playoff appearance this past year as well.

Roy officially becomes the seventh candidate that the Senators have considered for the job, in addition to their interim head coach from last season Marc Crawford and others, following the late-season firing of former head coach Guy Boucher.

The Senators are seemingly motivated by Roy’s friendship with Ottawa’s assistant general manager Peter MacTavish. They also cite his experience in working with young players at the QMJHL level as a positive attribute to coach the rebuilding Senators.

With the Sens at a cross-road for their franchise, the development of young talent is crucial to their future. Unfortunately for them, Patrick Roy is not the coach to rise to the occasion.

Although his overall picture of an NHL coach, with a 130-92-24 record with the Avalanche, looks successful, those numbers are disproportionately inflated with his first season, in which the Avalanche were on the NHL’s top teams, before falling back to Earth the next two seasons and missing the playoffs.

Granted, the Avalanche played in what was the NHL’s toughest division at the time, so playoff losses are not entirely Roy’s fault.

This notion was directly questioned and contradicted by avalanche general manager Joe Sakic. Roy’s decision to step down seems motivated by an ego-driven power struggle. In addition to being the head coach, Roy was also the Avalanche’s VP of hockey operations. Roy without a doubt enjoyed the added power, but the different responsibilities between the two positions may have been Roy’s downfall, Mike Brophy of The Hockey News explains.

"It is one thing to coach young players and quite another to be partially responsible for possibly trading them."

If Roy had a difficult time in Colorado, just imagine the relationship he’d have with Ottawa’s owner Eugene Melnyk. After years of noncompetitive performance and stingy personnel and roster moved, Melnyk has become a controversial and unpopular figure in Ottawa. Meanwhile, Melnyk hasn’t done himself any favors by responding to the criticism in a brash and combative manner.

Now look who would be on both sides of the spectrum. First, there’s the owner whose famously runs his franchise on a shoestring budget and isn’t afraid to fire back at anyone in his path. Then, there’s the power-hungry, glory driven head coach. Roy will be sure to fire up the fan base with high expectations, all the while that the media shines a bright spotlight on him. Can the dueling egos of Melnyk and Roy get along in Ottawa? Probably not.

Then there’s the matter of the Senators rebuild. One of the first steps of any rebuild is finding a coach who will be in it for the long-term, who’s willing to put up with a few bad seasons to reach the gratifying final product.

Even though Melnyk put a timetable on the rebuild to start paying off in 2021, it will likely take longer than that for the Senators to be legitimate cup contenders. After Roy’s abrupt departure from Colorado after three seasons, including one incredibly successful one, it’s hard to believe he’s willing to stick around that long.

If Roy signs in Ottawa only to leave in the same manner he left the Avalanche, their rebuilt will without a doubt be set back significantly.

Roy is a bonafide hockey mercenary. While he may not be motivated by money, he’s greedy for power and glory. When both are not given to him, he has no problem putting loyalties aside to find a new destination.

It happened in Montreal during his playing career and in Colorado during his coaching career. Ottawa may think third times the charm and that they and Roy are a perfect match, but they are nowhere near a match made in heaven.