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Patrick Roy sits on the bench after he was finally pulled out of the last game he would play for the Canadiens. Later that night, Vernon’s Red Wings beat Roy’s Canadiens 11-1. That breakfast happened on the morning of Dec. “It might be time for you to ask for a trade,” Vernon, perhaps the one person who understood Roy’s predicament the most, suggested to him. He spoke to Vernon about the pressure of Montreal, how he had thoughts of retiring now that he had turned 30, the stifling expectations he lived with. What an incredible coincidence that these two men would cross paths on this particular morning, brought together by bacon and eggs and a basket of toast cut into triangles, at the very moment Roy needed someone to confide in.

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“There was a free seat next to him and he motioned for me to sit down. “Patrick sat at the counter, he was getting ready to settle the bill,” Vernon told me. So Vernon was still with the Red Wings a year later when he entered the semi-basement restaurant on De Maisonneuve Blvd. But eventually, the weight of that environment had become too heavy and he had asked the Flames to trade him, which they did in 1994 when they sent him to the Red Wings for defenceman Steve Chiasson. A popular breakfast spot for hockey people a stone’s throw from the Forum, the restaurant shut its doors the same week the Roy trade celebrated its 20th anniversary.Ī Calgary native, Vernon had led his hometown team to its first Stanley Cup in 1989 and had become a local hero of sorts. In 2015, during an interview I published in La Presse that year, former goalie Mike Vernon told me what happened one morning in Montreal when he stopped for breakfast at the Casse-Croûte du Coin – or Moe’s Diner as it was better known in some circles. That reality in the dressing room was not going to change just because someone else was now GM.īut we also had a superstar who was tormented, who felt in the fall of 1995 that he was nearing the end of his rope.

We had an outgoing GM who had determined after years of running the team that his superstar had become a burden. But if the inevitable conclusion had not taken place that night in front of cameras, it would have happened another time.

2, 1995, and the debacle against the Red Wings because it struck the imagination, the images were so strong they were indelible, at least on TV. We love replaying the film from the night of Dec.

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What the following weeks demonstrated was that Avalanche GM Pierre Lacroix was willing to move Nolan and that he was determined to get his hands on Roy, a former client when Lacroix was still an agent.īut Canadiens president Ronald Corey fired Savard and replaced him with Réjean Houle, who had no idea how to run a hockey team. If there had been no change at the top, or at least if Savard had remained as general manager, it is very possible that Roy would not have even finished the month of October in Montreal.

The Canadiens began the 1995-96 season on the wrong foot and fans began screaming for changes to be made. For the good of everyone, he needed a change of scenery.” I still had the same admiration for him as I did when we won the Stanley Cup in 19, where he played a determining role. Over the previous years, I had to handle him with kid gloves. He took up too much space in the dressing room, had too much influence on the coach. In his biography, “Serge Savard: Forever Canadien”, Savard explains: “Patrick had become too important in the club. That night was simply a symptom of a greater illness. That 11-1 loss to the Detroit Red Wings at the Montreal Forum carries the weight of everything that preceded that day and everything that followed. 2, 1995 has become symbolic over the years because the tension between Roy and the Canadiens boiled over in a very public fashion, but it’s the wrong target. 6, 1995, these talks two months earlier should serve as a reminder that there was an inevitability attached to the legendary goaltender’s departure. As we approach the 25th anniversary of the actual Roy trade to Colorado on Dec.

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