Patrick Roy Pulls Islanders Goalie With 11 Minutes Left, Immediately Gets Scored On

When Patrick Roy made his NHL coaching debut with the Colorado Avalanche in 2013, he quickly became known for his propensity to take some gambles.

Like, you think Dan Campbell likes to press his luck? How about Patrick Roy pulling his goalie with more than half a period on the clock?

The irony of one of the best to ever play the position being more than happy to try that so early was always fun. 

Roy famously tried this with the Avalanche, and apparently, some years spent coaching in the QMJHL didn't tame his willingness to throw some serious Hail Mary's.

On Thursday night, the Roy's New York Islanders found themselves down by three to the St. Louis Blues with about 11 minutes to go. So, reaching into that old bag of tricks, Roy told net minder Semyon Varlamov to take a seat, leaving an empty cage at the Isles end of the ice.

That looks like a terrible decision… but is it?

Obviously, it yielded a goal, but is there an argument to be made that it was worth trying?

I think there is…

Patrick Roy's Early Goalie Pull Is The Last Ditch Effort To End All Last Ditch Efforts

Now there's plenty of evidence that over the years teams have started pulling the goalie earlier and earlier. There's a good deep dive into this in an article in Greg Revak's Hockey IQ Newsletter. In it, he discusses how pulling the goalie does significantly increase offense, but was traditionally done using a simple rule of thumb.  If you were down by one, you pulled the goalie with one minute to go, and if you needed two, then two minutes and so on.

That has since changed, but Roy's 11-minute move? That's in a league of its own.

I've got to think that Roy puts more consideration into this than it might seem. Scoring 3 goals in 11 minutes is far from impossible. That makes me think Roy did this because he didn't see an ounce of the offensive output required to score three unanswered goals in half a period.

So, since it looked to be coming, why not pull the goalie and possibly kickstart your offense?

Well, because it hasn't worked at least twice.  But if it had, I guarantee we'd see more teams doing it, just like we see teams pulling their goalies earlier and earlier.