Others were good, but Roy was great - Faceoff - hockey goaltender Patrick Roy - Brief Article

Hockey Digest, Summer, 2002 by Alex Gordon

LAST YEAR WE HAD IT easy. There was no debate over who our Player of the Year should be. Colorado's Joe Sakic was the runaway winner.

This year, though, the choice was a lot more complicated. As you've already seen from the cover, we ultimately went with Colorado Avalanche goalie Patrick Roy. But considering many pundits don't even think Roy will win the Vezina Trophy as the NHL's best goalie, you can see that this was a tough choice.

Ultimately, though, Roy was the right pick for a number of reasons. While not to discount Calgary's Jarome Iginla, our unofficial runner-up, his season wasn't exactly transcendental. What Iginla did is serve notice that he is an offensive weapon to be dealt with. He also signalled a changing of the guard, injecting some new blood into the typical Jagr-, Sakic-, and Bure-dominated scoring categories.

Roy, on the other hand, had a season for the ages. When a player is as consistently great as Roy has been over such a long period of time, it really takes an extra special season for us to take notice. Realizing that this year's version of the Avs was going to need a strong effort in the nets if it hoped to make the playoffs--much less repeat--Roy put the team on his back. On several nights, he was the lone factor in Colorado putting another notch in the "W" column.

Iginla, Montreal goalie Jose Theodore, and so many others had wonderful years, but there can only be one Player of the Year--and for us, it is Roy.