Patrick Roy - The man knew how to hate

Patrick Roy retired Wednesday, leaving $10 million on the table, and likely a few more productive years in his body. Roy also leaves with a host of records, notably most career wins and games played.

Roy retires as one of the modern era's best goalies, maybe the best. His ability to come up big when it mattered was legendary.

More than that, Roy was the ultimate competitor. One look into those ice-cold eyes let you know that St. Patrick physically hated his opponents.

Hate is being lost in sports today, and like it or not, hate is what makes confrontations great.

The spill of emotion, the complete and total ability to be caught up into the game, as a player or a fan, that is what makes sport memorable. Is it ridiculous? Silly? Ludicrous? Yes maybe, but it's very real, and very intense, and it's magical.

Roy brought this to the table. He hated your team, and your team and you hated, respected and feared him.

Perhaps, in retrospect, Roy's swan song came when he made the glove "save" against Brendan Shanahan in Game 6 of last year's Eastern Conference Final.

The Avs lead the series 3-2 and the game at that point. Shanahan fired a great shot that Roy snagged. Roy then followed up with that superfluous flourish that for young goalies everywhere in Canada was the Holy Grail. That save of Roy's was the perfect combination of the spectacular and the unnecessary.

In this case though Roy dropped the puck. The Wings tied the game and the Av's went on to lose in Game 7 when Detroit steamrolled Colorado.

That moment summed up Roy -- a fierce competitor, supremely confident, a man not afraid to show his peers up, because he could. He didn't get away with it in Game 6, but he usually did.

Earlier that same playoff year Roy willed the Avs past the San Jose Sharks -- simply not allowing the Sharks to win, despite the fact that San Jose carried the play for long stretches of Games 6 and 7, both of which Colorado won to take the series.

It was this cockiness and the undeniable talent that made Roy such a hated man for opposing fans. To be good was bad enough, but to know how good he was -- intolerable!

I remember my favorite moment as a young hockey fan. It was Grade 9, Rick Cicconi and I had somehow scored tickets to the biggest sporting event of the year in Toronto: a Maple-Leafs Canadiens hockey game.

The Leafs were in the middle of their usual impression of a hockey season, but Leaf-Habs games always were electric. No matter how Toronto was playing or how good the Habs were when I was kid (and this was well past the Montreal glory days), the Leafs always fought then hammer and tong.

In this game my new hero would be born. Guy Larose, a scrappy two way forward playing in either his first, or one of his first NHL games, scored a hat-trick against the mighty Roy and the Habs. It was, I believe, Larose's only hat trick in the NHL.

He didn't do too much for the rest of his years as a Leaf, but the kid was a fan favorite from them on, partially because of his "hell-bent for leather" style, but mostly because he had scored three against the hated "Les Glorieux."

I always wonder if Quebec kids feel the pang of traitorous feelings when they do something to slow down or hurt the team of their boyhood affections?

The real pleasure though was that Rick and I, two short, soft, pudgy kids at the time, were sitting beside two grown men who were rooting for Montreal.

The talk started as it usually does at hockey games, friendly banter during the warm-up. If a Leaf player broke a stick during a drill we'd hear the inevitable "that's the hardest shot he'll take all season - heh?"

While 14-year-old Rick and I would try to grasp at some shred of hope, noticing that the Habs were missing the net often in the warm-up (which all team's do) we'd say with a glee we didn't really feel "Guess Montreal left all their scoring sticks back in Quebec?"

The joking started good-naturedly of course because the Habs fans expected easy victory. Why not have a laugh with these poor misguided Toronto souls and let them down easily?

As the game went on though the Habs fans became more and more agitated, and we, more and more vicious in our teasing.

I seem to remember that the Habs scored first and that we heard about it. The Leafs tied it up and I believe went ahead, with us loudly making noises about the "Habs dynasty being over." Then Montreal evened things up again, and with less good nature then before the Habs fans gloated.

The teams traded goals, neither side being able to gain a distinct advantage, and with each goal or missed opportunity more barbs were thrown. The tone between our two groups became nasty, and even at our young age Rick and I realized that we were moving into dangerous and foreboding woods.

It came to us that these men, yes they were grown-men, but such is the power of hockey here that they had forgotten that, could do us, might do us, harm. These men had also forgotten that Rick and I were barely teenagers. They failed to consider that we had probably never had a date in our lives, and so had hockey and nothing else to pour our boyhood energies into (true on my account, and I suspect Rick's as well), and had begun to view us as enemies.

The pot was simmering, and it could boil over accidentally with the heat of the game.

Then, the single greatest moment of that game occurred. Ric Nattress - recently acquired in a big trade with the Calgary Flames slowly worked his way to the red line to shoot the puck in. Nattress had been acquired for his defensive abilities; he was never much of a scorer, even in his youth. And now, at the tail end of a solid career -- with snowshoes instead of skates -- Ric was the last man you would expect to provide some offense.

Yet there he was, over the red-line in a tie game, and building up, such as it was for him, speed.

I'll never know if Nattress meant to put his shot on goal, or if he had intended to pound the puck behind the net where the Leaf's forecheckers could chase after it and try to effect, through hard work, thuggery and luck, what they usually could not with skill -- putting the biscuit in the basket.

Regardless Nattress -- good for two, maybe three goals a year at most, fired the puck into the Montreal end. The puck took a funny dip and skipped through Patrick Roy's pads and into the net.

The Gardens erupted! Rick and I were delirious with joy. The incomparable Patrick Roy had just allowed a 65-foot, skittering shot from RIC NATTRESS to beat him. The Leaf's lead, and if this was not divine proof that Toronto was meant to, against all odds, win this game, well then, one just didn't know how to see His subtle hand, now did one?

Seeing the mighty Roy humbled as he was drove all rational thought from Rick and I. Roy was that good, and that infuriating, that any chance to revel in his misfortune had to be seized upon- regardless of the personal risk.

We danced like wild-men, hollered and shouted, and then started in on our two Montreal compatriots. I can't remember what we said, though with the bad blood that had been rising (with men who prior to the game's start we had shared popcorn with no less! Oh how the passions of men and nations can change) I'm sure we spared nothing.

I remember to this day knowing that we had gone too far. For one moment the man closest to me stiffened, then tightened, and then raised his arms. I don't know if Rick noticed, but I was suddenly very scared. I realized how big he was, he had been drinking steadily during the game, and now I could smell it on him. His eyes, just a little bleary were menacing to me in their slight lack of focus.

Then his compatriot put a hand on his arm, whispered something to him, shot me a look of warning, anger, and disgust (as if he would not have gloried in our misery had the situation been reversed) and then they sat down.

The period ended and the break came, and without speaking, we went our separate ways.

When the third period came, twenty minutes later, we still spoke little. Even when the Habs tied the game. Even when the Leafs inevitably prevailed at the end. Even during a wild finish where the Habs thought they had scored the equalizer only to be denied by the referees, we acknowledged each other hardly at all.

At the end of the game the men, remembering that they were men, did what men do, they congratulated us for the Leaf's win, and wished us luck, before moving away -- secretly fuming at the fates that had had them sit beside two such ill-mannered brats.

We for our part, too happy and excited with the win, flowed eager and chatting out into the city night, and onto the subway.

We never spoke about the game, or about that moment where the man raised his arms as if to call down the lightning of heaven upon us. Maybe we really didn't notice, and it is only time that has made things clear. I suspect though that even then we knew enough to be shamed by our behavior, but having seen the hated Roy and the Canadiens humbled we knew we had an excuse that millions would accept.

And THAT was the power of Patrick Roy. And THAT is why his will always be a special place in the history of this great game.