Bruce Dowbiggin
Deal With It: When St. Patrick Talked His Way Out Of Montreal
Coming soon, our latest book “Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey”. With my son Evan, we look back to Espo to the Bruins (1967), Gretzky to the Kings (1988) , and St. Patrick to the Avalanche (1995), Deal With It tracks the back story behind the most impactful trades in modern NHL history. With detailed analysis and keen insight into these and five other monumental transactions, Deal With It recalls the moments when history was changed. Plus a ranking of the Top 25 Deals in NHL History.
One of the most memorable occurred 24 years ago, on December 6, 1995: Patrick Roy and Mike Keane from the Montreal Canadiens to the Colorado Avalanche for Jocelyn Thibault, Martin Rucinsky and Andrei Kovalenko. Trading, arguably, the greatest goalie the Canadiens history was the culmination of organizational dysfunction from which it has yet to recover. It begins with the hiring of former Habs Mario Tremblay and Rejean Houle when the Canadiens stumbled entering the 1994-1995 season. It started off well. Then on a November night in Montreal…
“With the team cooling off from their torrid start under (Mario) Tremblay, the Habs were at home for a Saturday night affair hosting a powerful Red Wings team on its way to breaking the NHL single-season wins record set by the 1976-77 Montreal team (62 to that club’s 60). With the closing of the Forum, the arena Roy had once dominated, Patrick’s dominance had become less-than-surefire. (He came in that night at 238-80-34 all-time at the Forum.) All that rich history didn’t help Roy that particular night and before a national TV audience the wheels came off for hundreds of thousands to witness.
Earlier in the day, Roy had had an impromptu breakfast at Moe’s Diner in Montreal with Detroit goalie Mike Vernon, who’d himself been forced out of Calgary after winning a Cup. Roy described his predicament. “It might be time for you to ask for a trade,” Vernon suggested to him. Fast forward to the notorious game. Getting bludgeoned by the Wings attack, Roy had given up nine goals before the game hit its halfway mark. Getting mock cheers for one of his few saves on the night- prompted a seething Roy replied with mock acknowledgement to the crowd. Clearly overwhelmed, Roy was kept in the nets as Tremblay let his star goalie get roasted by Scotty Bowman, who enjoyed getting revenge on his former player Tremblay for some remarks he’d made about Bowman’s coaching style.
Finally hooked after the ninth marker, Roy glared menacingly at his coach as he walked by on the bench. Stopping to take care of more business, he walked back across and, face-to-face, told a distressed-looking Corey that he had just played his last game with the Canadiens. As Roy walked past Tremblay on his way to the end of the bench, Roy and Tremblay glared eye-to-eye. Roy told him in French, “You understand?” This very public moment overshadowed what remains the worst home loss in the club’s storied history, an 11-1 spanking from Detroit. TV highlights that night across North America showed the stare-down.“The whole city was talking about it,” recalled Montreal native Eric Engels. “The team had suspended Roy and said they were going to trade him, and I just remember saying to the bus driver that they didn’t have to go this way, that they could salvage the situation.”
The following days saw the controversy erupt even further. Just months after plucking Houle and Tremblay from outside the organization, Corey sided with his inexperienced newbies and told Roy he would be getting dealt even when Roy apologized for his spat and vowed to mend fences. Typical of the climate at the time for even superior players who “disrespected” the organization, Roy was persona non grata in a matter of days. In his book, Serge Savard: Forever Canadien”, Savard explained the inevitability of the deal: “Patrick had become too important in the club. He took up too much space in the dressing room, had too much influence on the coach. Over the previous years, I had to handle him with kid gloves. I still had the same admiration for him as I did when we won the Stanley Cup in 1986 and 1993, where he played a determining role. But a change had become necessary. The team revolved around him too much. For the good of everyone, he needed a change of scenery.”
Team captain Mike Keane didn’t help lower the temperature at the Forum by claiming the man who wore the “C” with the Canadiens didn’t necessarily need to speak French and that he wouldn’t be bothering to learn it because the dressing room mostly communicated in English (true even in the most predominately French-based Habs teams such as the 1993 Cup winner that boasted no less than dozen Quebecois). Both Keane and Roy would go on the trading block together, joining similarly exiled pieces like Chris Chelios and Guy Carbonneau (the captain of the ’93 Cup winner, dealt after 1993-94 to the Blues for Jim Montgomery, after flashing the middle finger to a photographer who had eavesdropped on him playing a round of golf). Carbonneau’s successor at captain, Kirk Muller— an Ontario boy through and through— expressed how honoured and proud he was to wear the fabled letter patch. But he, too, would find himself gone to the Islanders partway through 1994-95. In other words, almost no one was sacred in Ron Corey’s world. Only four days after his dressing-down of the team president and head coach, Roy was notified by Houle that he had been traded.
Just like that, Montreal had parted with its franchise goalie as if it were still the “Original Six” days and players that got in management’s crosshairs were expendable. How traumatic was the deal for the rookie GM Houle? He’ll never tell. “And that is what I intend to do forever so that I don’t have to look back at a time that was difficult for me.” As for Roy, his take was “It was clear from the organization that they had made their decision. I said, ‘Okay, I’ll accept my mistake.’ I agree I was the one who made that thing happen on that Saturday, and both parties agreed it was in the best interests of us that we go different directions. I understand that you can’t put ten years aside and give it a little tap and it’s all gone. I lived through lots of good things in Montreal, but, again, it’s a turn I accept.”
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Stop us if you heard this before. Justin Trudeau talks tough but folds like a cheap lawn chair. His current spasmodic response to Donald Trump’s tariff threat should look familiar. He’s been here and backed down before.
The defining crisis of his time as prime minister– the 2022 Trucker Convoy in Ottawa– is the blue print for his handling of stress. For those with poor memories— or Liberals trying to forget—his arbitrary handling of the Covid vaccine crisis created a massive pushback among voters. Having forced everyday Canadians to take— under threat— an unproven vaccine he was faced with an unprecedented display of impertinence to his majesty.
In better times the pushback might have originated with a media offended by his high-handed ArriveCan fiasco and locking citizens into hotels against their will. By this time, however, PMJT had paid off large segments of Canadian media and was on his way to paying off many more. So it fell to independent truckers to expose Trudeau’s arbitrary undemocratic behaviour.
They came to Parliament Hill armed with truck horns and Bouncy Castles. There were no guns, no bombs, no assault vehicles. Just your garden-variety 18 wheelers who’d come from across the nation. This made Mr. Tough guy catatonic. As the truckers neared the capital he called them racists and Nazis intent on overthrowing the government. He baselessly claimed (in French) that their supporters were anti-science.
This faux-tough talk surprised many who recalled that, only months before, he’d blithely stood back, brows knit, as indigenous radicals blocked the main railway lines for months in protest of oil pipelines (more on this later). It was all soothing words and grovelling imprecations to understanding from Skippy. Maybe billions were lost, but at least he hadn’t upset Canada’s “first peoples”.
But when truckers protested in his home city, it was Code Red for our hero. Rather than meet protesters when the trucks arrived, hearing their grievances and agreeing to negotiate— as he’d done with the trainspotters— a cringing Trudeau hid, vilifying the invaders from inside his Covid cottage. It was all no quarter, no surrender, no show.
Canada’s media dutifully covered his flank, shopping numerous fake stories about Nazi/ Rebel flags and arson attempts. (For which they’ve never apologized.) In parliament he and his NDP service animals invented stories of huge donations from evil right-wing forces in the U.S.
Not surprisingly, giving Truckers the vaunted Trudeau middle finger did not send them scurrying back to their homes. Quite the opposite. Instead they hunkered down in an 18-wheel version of Woodstock. It was a rock n’ roll party that Ottawa police were dumbfounded how to stop. Noisy but non-violent.
This infuriated the burghers of Ottawa, those making their livings from government and the National Capital Commission. They were losing sleep in their cozy cribs. “Someone must pay!” A still-bunkered Trudeau then played the Dad card, sending in federal cops and suspending Canadians rights while seizing the financial livelihoods of the Convoy leaders.
His suspension of historic civil rights invited international censure. It would later be declared illegal in the courts. The use of the Emergencies Act “does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness — justification, transparency and intelligibility,” Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley wrote. No matter. He’d proudly used a sledge hammer on a flea. People charged with mischief were off to jail for five years. Cosseted by the huzzahs of the purchased media he gave himself a W and went surfing.
Fast forward to 2024 when Justin was about as popular as scrofula in the polls . Entering 2025 he was trying desperately to hang onto power till the end of his term in the fall, when his handlers at the WEF would rescue him with sinecures and flattery. All domestic attempts to shame him into quitting failed. It seemed he had a clear path to make his own exit.
He never anticipated a re-elected, vindictive Donald Trump, never planned for the implications. Yes, this was the same Trump he’d casually ridiculed and insulted for most of the decade. Least of all, he was unready for a Trump armed with serious tariff threats unless the post-national PM shored up his defence and propped up the border. Oops.
Shades of the Truckers, the tariff skirmish could have been resolved by working with Trump on the border issue. But that’s not how PMJT rolls away. Trump invited him to Mar A Lago post-election, only to ridicule him as “governor” of a new 51st American state. A butt-hurt Trudeau then shut down Parliament and blamed Alberta’s energy cash cow, getting the other premiers to insist that the province block oil sales to the U.S.
Just like Dad in the old days there was no reciprocal ask of Ontario blocking its auto industry or Quebec its aluminum industry. Branch-plant Alberta would carry the burden. He coerced media and other parties to give him cover, vilifying anyone refusing to go along. He closed Parliament till March so his party could sort out its next move. This divide-and-retreat strategy has left the country on verge of dismemberment. But he acts like he had time.
Trump says Trudeau has till February 1 to cut a deal. Instead of negotiating Trudeau is threatening. The PM bravely supports “the principle of dollar-for-dollar matching tariffs” against the U.S. Conceding that this a terrible tactic he says the feds would be “there to support and compensate businesses”. Using public money to compensate for the negligence his progressive agenda has left behind. Can you say Covid.2?
What’s the difference from his Truckers Convoy dithering performance? Trudeau had simple truckers then, without power. In Trump, however, he has a freshly elected president with the hammer of Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House. Who can’t wait to crush Trudeau and his Liberal snobs as freeloaders on the American dime. “Exporters of terrorists, drugs and contraband into America”. Trump now has a unified front of social media billionaires while Trudeau has only a burned-out cabinet and Laurentian loyalists. What couldn’t go wrong?
If Trudeau lets this go past Feb. 1 without a deal or an election call it will be the worst constitutional catastrophe since conscription in WW I and II. Expect no mercy from down south. Every turn of the screw on Canada increases Trump’s polling. The Family Compact ain’t saving you, Skippy. And they won’t save the midwits who elected Trudeau PM three times.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Play this drinking game. Every time some football analyst on TV says during the course of a game, “He’ll be a star for this team for years” take a drink. You’ll be tipsy in a hurry.
Maybe in the old days, Skip. But the concept of the players you’re loving now lasting very long with NFL, NHL, NBA or even MLB teams has come and gone. The new model was never more apparent as when the NFL No.1 seed Detroit Lions, replete with young stars, were blindsided from the NFL playoffs by upstart Washington’s rookie QB Jaden Daniels.
Heavily favoured Detroit (10 point favourites in some places) was loaded with superstars on their first contract. Jahmyr Gibbs, Jameson Williams, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Penei Sewell, Aidan Hutchinson (injured), Sam LaPorta, Jack Campbell and Ali McNeil (injured). Added to veteran QB Jared Goff and a sprinkling of veterans they seemed perfectly balanced.
Except the new mantra says you can only win a Super Bowl in this time of salary-cap hell with a HOF QB or a QB on his affordable rookie deal. Goff is neither, and to emphasize the mantra he threw four picks and fumbled once en route to the heartbreak loss. The dynasty turned into as ‘die-nasty”.
In the old days you’d just say “we will get them next year” and hope for better luck. But within two years the Lions will have to do a painful triage of their glittering young stars. You can’t pay them all, so who will go and who will stay? Adding to the misery of the salary-cap mandated chop will be can you get value for them in trades?
The Lions are far from the only ones dealing with leagues that value parity ahead of dynasty. In the NHL the Edmonton Oilers and Toronto Maple Leafs are hearing the steady tick-tock counting down on the NHL’s cap machine. The two clubs lost consistently for a decade to score top picks in the draft. Riding the skills of Conor McDavid and Auston Matthews they’ve brushed up against a Stanley Cup but have yet to do the deal.
As every fan of the teams knows it’s a race to add the proper players to the roster to compliment the young stars before they get too expensive. McDavid is an unrestricted FA after 2025-26 and as the league’s top star he will command the maximum under the salary cap where ever he lands. If that’s Edmonton he and Leon Draisaitl will be added to Darnell Nurse, Zach Hyman, Ryan Nugent Hopkins as a large portion of the cap. Can the Oilers balance these stars and still pay defensemen and goalies?
Ditto the Maple Leafs who have Matthews, William Nylander, Mitch Marner, Morgan Rielly and Chris Tanev hogging the top end of the cap. Can they find the right pieces at a cheap price to create a team that will reach the Final, let alone win the Stanley Cup? And can they do it before their core players start to decline?
For those reasons, NHL teams and players were fixated on the news that there will be no more escrow deductions taken from players the rest of the season. That led many to surmise that the salary cap will be going up significantly for the next few years, allowing teams more latitude to complete rosters and elite players to be paid their worth to the league. Even if true the increases will be proportionate, forcing the same constraints of a cap at the top and bottom of payrolls.
None of these economic concerns seem to bother the defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers. With just a luxury tax, not a salary cap, to restrain them the Dodgers have added Japanese star Riki Sasaki and bullpen ace Taylor Scott to their payroll in the past week. This in addition to two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell. Their payroll now exceeds $370 M. For 2025. By comparison the Pittsburgh Pirates sit at just $77 M for 2025 and the fans are outraged demanding the owner sell.
The Dodgers justify the spending because they are building a global brand. While the competing leagues constrict their payrolls to pay service to parity, MLB is allowing the Dodgers to take a soccer attitude to their payroll. The arguments for parity are pretty weak when you consider that their have-nots are happy to take the bounty of great TV/ digital/ logo revenue but refuse to improve their teams.
Which leaves us with the Toronto Blue Jays, definitely a large-market team trying to spend like one. Monday they announced the signing of FA Anthony Santander, who had 44 homers for Baltimore last season. This follows an offseason of humiliation where the team has made no progress signing its superstars Vladdy Guerrero and Bo Bichette.
Like NFL Lions or NHL Maple Leafs, the clock is ticking on their core players as they become prohibitively expensive. Should they sign both? One? Or trade them to get value before they scram to LA or New York? Right now they seem caught between bad options.
Meanwhile the underwhelming Jays management was punked— yet again—in pursuit of a high-profile Japanese FA. The very visible failure left many wondering if it was the market or the management that is holding back Toronto. Which might be another drinking game. Take a drink every time the Jays management swings and misses on a high-profile free agent. You’ll be in detox pretty soon.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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