Larry Robinson has been hired midseason by Lou Lamoriello and fired midseason by Lou Lamoriello.
He sat next to Patrick Roy in the Canadiens locker room when Roy was a 19-year-old rookie leading Montreal to the 1986 Cup and watched him grow through the first four years of the goalie’s career.
So there are few people more qualified to comment on Roy’s hire as Islanders head coach than the Hall of Fame defenseman.
“Patrick doesn’t hide anything,” Robinson told The Post over the phone on Sunday morning. “He says what he thinks. He’s a winner. He’s the type of guy that if you’re going to war, you would take him on your side. He hates losing.”
The news of Lane Lambert’s firing did not come as a shock to Robinson.
But even he was surprised to see Roy named as the replacement as the news reverberated around the hockey world on Saturday afternoon.
The last NHL coaching experience on Roy’s résumé came in 2016, when he finished his third season coaching the Avalanche.
Before the next season, he resigned as Colorado’s coach and vice president of hockey operations, citing differences with general manager Joe Sakic.
Since then, he has been honing his craft in the Quebec Major Junior League, coaching the team he co-owns, the Quebec Remparts.
“Personally speaking, I think it’s a great choice,” Robinson said. “He’s a very passionate guy who brings a lot of energy to the table. And he knows the game well. He’s used to coaching, he’s been a coach before. Once you coach, you don’t lose it.
“I know a lot of comments in some of the papers that he’s been out of the game, but he hasn’t been out of the game. He’s only been out of the NHL. He still knows the game.”
Roy has always known the game. The cliche goes that goalies are different, but Roy was different even amongst goalies.
“He was more than just a goalie,” Claude Lemieux, who won Cups with Roy as a player in Montreal and Colorado, told The Post. “He knew exactly what he wanted to see happen in front of him. Not just stop pucks. He understood a lot about every part of the game and he was always into it.”
When they were with the Avalanche, Roy was already wading into the junior hockey waters.
Lemieux remembered going to Roy’s house and seeing a board with all the Remparts’ lines laid out.
“He was not coaching, but he was sort of coaching from a distance and talking to his staff,” said Lemieux, who played for Lamoriello’s Devils and currently represents Pierre Engvall and Sebastian Aho as an agent. “It’s always been a really big passion of his to be in that position.”
That passion was on display in his first game as coach of the Avalanche, when Roy nearly slammed the glass on the bench down onto Bruce Boudreau, invoking a $10,000 fine.
It was evident on Sunday morning, too, when he led a morning skate packed with intensity before the Islanders faced the Stars — screaming instructions, slamming his stick on the ice, motivating.
If Roy had any fatigue from a long travel day on Saturday, flying from Quebec City to Montreal and then driving the six-plus hours to Long Island, it didn’t show.
“It’ll be like what Jacques [Demers] did to us in 1993,” Roy said. “Together we’re gonna win and Jacques said, ‘We’re gonna shock the world of hockey by winning the Stanley Cup.’ And we were looking around and said, ‘Did he look at our lineup?’ But the man believed in it, so I want us to believe in ourselves. I want us to believe.
“And Lou really loves this team. He really loves this team and I agree with him. This is a good team.”
The relationship with Lamoriello must be sturdier than the marriage with Sakic — and it is already a good sign that Roy said Saturday he has no interest in management.
“He’s obviously a good teacher. My junior guys that played for him really enjoy him,” Lemieux said. “And he’s very passionate. He’s very intense. And he demands work ethic. That’s not negotiable with Patrick.
“And I think that’s a great marriage with Lou, the way that I know Lou. Showing up and giving everything you have every day, every night is not something that should be inconsistent. So I think that’s something that he brings.”
Those who know Roy believe in him.
“You can’t dispute the fact that he knows how to win,” Lemieux said. “And you can’t dispute the fact that he knows how to coach.”
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