But why would management even want to trade their best player? Was it Roy's huge ego, his contract, a good time to try to rebuild? I don't see how trading him would benefit Montreal in the short or long term, considering the package they got in return. None of it makes sense to me from a hockey standpoint.
i think a lot of people thought roy was done as an elite player. he hadn't contended for the vezina in three and a half years. he had just had the first losing season of his career and was in jeopardy of a second. he had a lot of miles on his body and had just turned thirty. and thibault actually ended up having better stats and a much better record that year than roy did in montreal.
i am sure montreal fans thought roy was done. re: my previous post, why else would they turn on their last great superstar, who was french, homegrown, and resonated with the province like none other since lafleur? montreal fans might be notoriously fickle, but i think they also know better than to do that to their extremely proud goalie unless they thought there was nothing to lose. if they had known that roy had another eight top seasons in him, they almost certainly would have been chanting
tremblay, c'est merde.
as for the trade, definitely houle should have done better, devalued asset or not. a better GM would have been more patient and waited for a contender to crack as the trade deadline approached. in the history of this league, a proven playoff goalie of that calibre has
never come on the open market. one could argue actually that another proven playoff goalie of roy's caliber has
never existed in the history of this league.
that said, thibault was the best goaltending prospect since jimmy waite. that sounds funny now, but it meant something back in '95. he was considered the most talented young goalie in the game, with a higher upside than felix potvin, who at the time looked like he was on his way to a potential hall of fame career.
not only was thibault french, he was coming off a 12-2-2 season in quebec as fiset's back up and he stole fiset's starting job in the playoffs. a good case can be made that thibault had at least as much value to the habs then as nolan did, and kovalenko and rucinsky had more value than fiset, who was thought to be an average starter at best and ended up being less than that.
EDIT: when the deal was announced, i actually laughed. my favourite team up to '93 was the habs, so i was sad. but my second favourite team in the first half of the 90s was the nordiques (first after montreal, then after vancouver), so i was also happy.
but you had to be there to know the genuine shock, not just because of the objective value of the return, which looked better then than it does now. but also because the avs had so much top young talent-- sakic, forsberg, ozolinsh, kamensky, ricci (who at the time was regarded as a slam dunk future all-star first line center stuck behind two even better guys), even adam deadmarsh. to have only gotten thibault and two guys who were at best colorado's 7th and 8th best fowrards seemed ridiculous compared to what lacroix had given up a year earlier to get wendel clark.
the morning of the trade, if you had told any knowledgeable fan that roy was traded to the avs and asked what they thought the return was, the answer probably would have been either 1. forsberg, or 2. thibault, ricci, and kamensky, or 3. thibault, kovalenko, rucinsky, AND ricci.