That's the thing that I always bring up whenever people focus on the Roy trade as the true turning point for the franchise. We actually got a reasonable (on paper at the time at least) return for Patty and we still had a very strong center line, plus a few other good elements. The true nosedive was the Turgeon/Damphousse trades, those truly broke us for years.
Its hard to pin down the habs turning point. The habs were dying a slow death with an accumulation of poor asset management and trading that started years before the roy trade. That trade just happened to be the most notable, so it naturally gets referred to as the turning point.
My problem with the return on the roy deal is that they traded roy so fast. Did they even do a diligent job to see what else was out there at the time? I think they could have got a few teams playing off each other if they remained patient patient to sweeten the pot. Instead, I think they were more concerned with getting getting out of the circus atmosphere asap.
You can maybe justify the trade in the sense that you got a good young forward in Rucinsky, and a good goalie prospect in Thibault. Those are two players you could potentially build around, but adding Mike Keane to the mix put it over the top as a poor value deal for Montreal.
In retrospect, it was even worse because Thibault turned out to be a generic starter at best. Rucinsky was fine, but kovalenko was a generic top 6 player who had no upside.
The habs struck out on this trade both in terms of value, and also on realized upside.