• Hockey violence
• Meagher

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Roy a Hall-of-Shame parent coach

posted by jmeagher at 17h21

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Patrick Roy greets young goalies at sweater ceremony. (Christine Muschi, Reuters)

Few will argue Patrick Roy was one of the greatest goalies to ever play the game. But he isn’t measuring up as a hockey parent.

Twice in the past year, Jonathan and Frédéric Roy, who both play for Quebec Remparts, a team coached and co-owned by their famous father, have brought the game into disrepute with violent on-ice acts.

Last March, his son Jonathan, a goalie, skated the length of the ice to pummel an opposing netminder who did not want any part of a fight.

The savagery of the incident prompted provincial reforms to deal with gratuitous hockey violence.

Apparently not everyone got the memo on stick-work, etc.

On Friday night at Verdun Auditorium, on the eve of his father’s pomp sweater retirement ceremony by the Canadiens, 17-year-old Frédérick Roy lost it when he delivered a vicious cross-check to the face of Montreal Junior player Vincent Bourgeois, a former Rempart.

The cheap-shot couldn’t have come at a worse time for members of the Roy clan, who are earning nasty reputations as hockey outlaws.

Not suprisingly, Patrick’s sons were greeted with boos when introduced Saturday night at the Bell Centre. How pathetic is that?

In what was supposed to be a feel-good public healing gesture 13 years after Roy’s controversial departure from the Habs in 1995, it instead became an opportunity for Montreal hockey fans to voice their displeasure with the family's hockey hot-head antics.

Like father, like son, some must have muttered.

For the record, the QMJHL slapped Frédérick Roy with a 15-game suspension on Monday, including an automatic one-game ban for a game misconduct for cross-checking.

Now that Saint Patrick’s No. 33 sweater is permanently suspended (excuse the pun) in the rafters, he may want to reflect on what type of "hockey code" he wants to instill in his sons.

Not to mention all the other impressionable youngsters watching with disgust across the country.