Adam Foote shared a hotel room with Patrick Roy for eight years in Colorado, which gave him a closer view than most of what made the goaltender tick. Some of it was ordinary enough. Avalanche teammates made a tradition of ordering banana splits from room service the night before road games.
Then there was the night Foote came back to the room before a playoff opener.
Speaking on theScore’s podcast When Goalies Were Weird, Foote prefaced the story by noting it might not go down well with his former roommate.
“We’re all in a hotel in Colorado the night before our first playoff game, and I don’t know, he’s probably going to kill me if I tell you this, but…” Foote said with a laugh.
“The old keys open just real quick, and I go in and Roy’s standing on his bed going down to a butterfly. And he’s still got his dress pants on and his golf shirt,” he continued. “He jumps off the bed and his hair, the thin long hair at the front, flips. It’s like, ‘What the hell are you doing?!’ He goes, ‘Nothing. Nothing, Footer. Just getting ready. Just getting ready.'”
What was Patrick Roy like as a teammate?
Foote’s reaction was somewhere between amusement and recognition of what he was dealing with.
“He was so intense, even the night before, so focused, that it kind of said to me, ‘Holy crap,'” Foote said. “I was giggling but at the same time going, ‘Here we go.'”
READ MORE: Martin Brodeur shares Patrick Roy’s legendary chirp at country club
There’s a certain logic to it. Roy is the goaltender who did more than anyone to popularize the butterfly, a style that had been dismissed by coaches as flopping until he made it the dominant technique in the sport. Practicing the movement on a hotel mattress in dress pants is eccentric, but it’s the behavior of someone who built a career on repetition.
It worked out reasonably well. Roy won four Stanley Cups, two in Montreal and two in Colorado, and retired with 551 regular-season wins. Both the Canadiens and the Avalanche have retired his No. 33.
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