Patrick Roy arrived at his first Montreal Canadiens training camp in 1984 as an 18-year-old goaltender nobody had any particular expectations of. Among the jobs assigned to him was stopping shots from Guy Lafleur, at that point the fifth-highest scorer in NHL history and a man Roy had spent his childhood watching on television every Saturday night.
One day the group did penalty shots. Roy stopped the one that mattered to him.
“We did penalty shots, and I stopped one from Guy. I think I called all my buddies afterwards,” Roy said, per La Presse. “I used to watch him play on Saturday nights, and there I was on the Forum ice stopping him. My feet weren’t touching the ground.”
What was Guy Lafleur like in the dressing room?
The seat beside Roy’s belonged to him, and the ritual took a while.
“I was sitting at the end of the dressing room, and Guy was to my left, putting on his equipment. It was intimidating. It took him five minutes to get dressed,” Roy said. “His shoulder pads were attached to his pants. He’d get dressed, then go and have a smoke in the room next door, where they sharpened the skates, because Jacques Lemaire didn’t want him smoking in the dressing room anymore.”
The two never played a regular-season game together. Roy spent the first 10 games of that season without appearing in goal, was sent back to junior, and Lafleur retired shortly afterwards. Roy has an explanation for the timing.
“I was with the Canadiens for the first 10 games and then they sent me back to junior. That’s why he retired, he saw I was leaving,” he said.
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What stayed with him beyond the save was the person, which is roughly what everyone who dealt with Lafleur has always said.
“He was available, accessible, very generous with his time. I had a lot of admiration for that,” Roy said. “What I remember is his fighting spirit.”
Roy went on to win four Stanley Cups and three Conn Smythe Trophies. Lafleur, who won five Cups with Montreal, died in April 2022 at the age of 70. Roy said at the time that he hoped supporters would give him an ovation rather than a moment of silence.
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