quoipourquoi
Goaltender
tbh, the only time you could make a somewhat credible argument for roy was going into the '94 season. mario is skipping the season and we wondered if he'd ever come back, hasek hadn't yet become hasek, fedorov hadn't yet become fedorov, lindros was entering his second year, hull had slowed down from his 70 goal seasons, messier was coming off a garbage year, bourque was coming off two non-norris years and got swept in the first playoffs.
but i think you'd still probably enter the season with gretzky coming off that '93 playoffs as #1 and roy as #2, or at the very best an extremely distant 1a.
and early in the season, roy was definitely already pushed back. gretzky had a six point game in the first week and had 17 points in the first 6 games, 35 points in the first month (15 games). fedorov had 9 goals in his first 8 games and 24 points in the first month (14 games). gilmour had 13 points in the first week (5 games) and he and lindros both had 25 in the first month (15 games each), and while roy was great in his first month too he wasn't that great. in fact, there were whispers that potvin, a.k.a. the next big thing, was passing him—potvin and the leafs started the year on a 9-0 run and potvin personally was putting up what we would soon be calling hasek-level stats.
in the first month, roy was rocking a 2.16 GAA (second to puppa, who somehow had a sub-2.00 GAA while going 3-7-2) and was leading the league with a .930 SV% (13 games, a 10,000th of a save ahead of potvin). hasek doesn't really get going until month two, and really becomes MVP hasek in the second half of month two when he wins 6 of 7, pitching three shutouts and allowing just 6 goals in those 7 games. but by that point any hope of roy holding the best player in the world reputation has vanished. beezer also starts to pull ahead in month two.
Here are the after-playoffs THN rankings from the yearbooks in the surrounding years:
1993
1. Mario Lemieux
2. Eric Lindros
3. Doug Gilmour
4. Chris Chelios
5. Pat Lafontaine
6. Teemu Selanne
7. Patrick Roy
8. Wayne Gretzky
9. Kevin Stevens
10. Jeremy Roenick
1994
1. Mario Lemieux
2. Doug Gilmour
3. Sergei Fedorov
4. Patrick Roy
5. Brian Leetch
6. Eric Lindros
7. Wayne Gretzky
8. Pavel Bure
9. Scott Stevens
10. Jeremy Roenick
1996
1. Mario Lemieux
2. Jaromir Jagr
3. Patrick Roy
4. Eric Lindros
5. Peter Forsberg
6. Paul Kariya
7. Chris Chelios
8. Mark Messier
9. Dominik Hasek
10. Ray Bourque
Going into the lockout season might be another moment to consider, since it gives us a look at a Lemieux-less league. Jagr, Sakic, and Hasek all started the season red hot (which matches what we’d see from them over the next half decade), but Roy was sitting at a .923 after the first month despite the Canadiens playing .500 hockey.
Given that he had a stronger track record, and that Gilmour and Fedorov (the other players ranked above Roy in 1994) hadn’t necessarily stood out at the beginning of 1995 the way they did the year before, it’s probably a short window where saying that based on his reputation, Patrick Roy is the best player in a Lemieux-less NHL is not a wrong answer.
I don’t think it’s as strong of an argument as 2001-2003ish though, because it relies on us not knowing what Jagr and Sakic and Hasek were going to do, whereas early-2000s Roy had fantastic numbers (particularly at even-strength) that stand out independent of his reputation.
But to make a reputation argument, going into Game 7 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals, Roy’s coming off of two-straight Game 7 shutouts in 2002, Hart/Pearson nominations in 2001-02, and the 2001 Conn Smythe. I don’t think the 7-0 result is nearly as funny if it hadn’t happened to the one person to whom we’d probably not expect it to happen: the best player in the world.