MONTREAL — The camera shutters started clicking while Patrick Roy was still walking down the hallway.
They kept going as he walked up the ramp and sat down in front of a throng of reporters Thursday afternoon.
Head coach of the Islanders for less than a week, Roy might as well have been the president.
His welcome here in Montreal, where the Islanders faced the Canadiens on Thursday inside a building with a mural of their coach hoisting the Stanley Cup painted on its side, was more universally positive than any politician could hope for.
Roy’s response to all of it, as he said Wednesday, was to try — desperately, and undoubtedly in vain — to dim the spotlight.
His message to the Montreal faithful?
“I am sorry. I just want to focus on our game,” he said. “I think everybody in Montreal knows how much I love them and how much respect I have for this organization. But at the same time, we’re here to win a hockey game.”
What does the city mean to him?
“You might not like my answer,” he said. “Today it’s not about me. It’s about our team. It’s a four-point game and this is where the focus has to be and that’s what I said to the guys.”
There was no budging Roy off message here.
No matter how many No. 33 sweaters would be in the stands, no matter the reception he would get from the fans who watched him lead the Canadiens to two Stanley Cups, he was going to do everything in his power to avoid being a sideshow.
Of course, by the situation’s very nature, that was impossible.
It seems that every figure in this city has a story about Roy — watching him, meeting him, hearing their parents talk about him.
That includes Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis, who reminisced Wednesday about scoring a goal on Roy at age 12 during a PeeWee tournament.
“Every year, I think, they had a Humpty Dumpty practice where fans would come and watch the Canadiens practice. And then my team went on the ice and everybody took a breakaway, a shootout attempt against Patrick,” St. Louis told reporters. “Patrick poke-checked me, he made it easy on us, but I flipped it over him and I scored.”
St. Louis played against Roy in the NHL, too, and now counts him as a coaching contemporary. But once an idol, always an idol.
“The amount of time I was Patrick Roy in the street playing goalie, we all admired him and idolized him,” St. Louis said. “And so he meant a lot to me. The rest of the kids growing up here, he was kind of the backbone of the French guys for a long time.”
So yes, the notion that Roy could turn this into a normal regular-season game between the Islanders and Canadiens is fanciful.
The 58-year-old has been around long enough to understand that. Ditto for his team.
“I think it’s gonna be a very warm welcome for him going back there in Montreal,” Bo Horvat said. “I’m sure there’s gonna be a posse waiting for him when we get to the hotel. Obviously it’s a big night for him. Get these games, these moments, we do it for Patrick it’ll be that much more special. We gotta find a way to get it done.”
But doing his best to make it about more than him, Roy felt, was a simple matter of respect.
“It’s about our team. I love these guys and like I said to them, I was very happy about how receptive they’ve been,” Roy said. “They deserve my respect. We’ve been talking a lot of things. We’re talking about our structure, we’re talking about our mindset and these guys are buying into what I’m trying. My respect is very important to them.”
