Deconstructing Patrick Roy: as the Avalanche roll into high gear in the playoffs, opposing players will try to get inside the head of the game's best goaltender. Good luck

Sporting News, The, April 29, 2002 by Adrian Dater

"Patrick does the same thing. He's the first guy to say that his reflexes aren't the same as they were, but he's already (in position), so his reflexes don't have to be as good as they were."

Roy's game changed slightly last season, due mostly to a growing realization of his athletic mortality. Roy realized time was running out on his career, and he made a firm vow to not go out on a steep decline in play. He started eating a bit less in the offseason, and what he did eat was more nutritious. He took up more strength training, especially on the legs, and Roy says his legs feel stronger than they have in five years.

"You get older, you have to take care of yourself a little different than when you were 21," Roy says. "I'm no different. I think my conditioning is better now than it was. That helped me a lot this year."

On the ice, Roy still plays the same butterfly style he popularized in the 1980s that spawned a generation of Quebecois copycats such as Martin Brodeur, Patrick Lalime, Jean-Sebastien Giguere and Felix Potvin, the latter of whom Roy faced in the first round against Los Angeles. Roy didn't invent the butterfly--most credit Glenn Hall and Jacques Plante--but he certainly refined it.

"You could see what he was doing, and you could get an idea of how he accomplished it, whereas the (goalies) in the '70s and '80s seemed to be all over the place," Engblom says. "Sure, the older guys knew the angles, but Patrick seemed to take it another step further."

Roy's butterfly really should be called the Venus Flytrap. He tempts shooters by flashing an opening between his pads, touching his knees and shifting his ankles outward. Then, when the shooter takes the bait, the pads snap shut, engulfing the puck. As he has gotten older, and smarter, Roy doesn't show quite as big an opening and gives himself more time to react by showing it that much earlier.

"He's adapted to the times," says Avalanche assistant coach Jacques Cloutier, a former NHL goalie. "Patrick is so smart. He realizes he isn't 25 anymore physically, but mentally he's sharper than he's ever been. That's allowed him to stay one step ahead of everybody."

Opposing coaches find it tough to stay one step ahead of Roy. Before Game 1 of this year's first-round series, Kings coach Andy Murray thought showing videos of his team's 13 regular-season goals against Roy was a futile gesture.

"Then all the guys are going to say, `Who are you kidding? He's got a 1.94 goals-against, the second-best save percentage in the league. Are you trying to tell us it's going to be easy to score on him?' Everything we get against him, we're going to have to earn," Murray says. "I think he has too much mental strength to get off his game. If we score, it's going to be because we earned them, not because of anything he did."

If Roy had not had an MVP-quality season, some believe the Avalanche would have missed the playoffs. The team set a franchise record for fewest goals scored (212) but, with Roy, it allowed the fewest (169). As a result, Roy had his name engraved on the William Jennings Trophy, given to the goalie who allows the fewest goals in a season, for the fifth time. More hardware.