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There's no law against reconciling long after a divorce, so why wouldn't the Montreal Canadiens decide to retire Patrick Roy's No. 33 after all these years?

It is the team's 100th anniversary, after all, and there's a nostalgic feel-good thing that's been going on up there because of it. Besides, this is a pretty good time to let bygones be bygones, what with more than a decade having passed since Roy told his team on national television to take his job and shove it.

Patrick Roy hopes retiring his number will be remembered in Montreal, not the way he left some 13 years ago. (AP)
Patrick Roy hopes retiring his number will be remembered in Montreal, not the way he left some 13 years ago. (AP)
Don't remember that classic little dustup? YouTube it some time because it's one of the greatest breakup scenes ever captured on tape, coming when Roy was finally pulled after allowing nine goals in a game against Detroit.

Roy was like a pitcher who needed his bullpen in the first inning of that Dec. 2, 1995 evening, but his coach and former teammate Mario Tremblay apparently wanted to send the goalie a message, and ultimately embarrassed him. When Roy was finally replaced, he stormed past the coach on the bench, in full view of the cameras, and told the team president seated in the first row of the stands that he was done.

Four days later, Roy was traded to the Colorado Avalanche, bringing a sudden and distasteful end to what had been an extraordinary career with a storied team.

"It's funny, because when you get to the NHL, they say to you that one game does not make a career," Roy said in a conference call this week. "But one game pretty much made my career in Montreal."

Such is life, of course, unfair that it is sometimes. Roy was truly a standout player for the Canadiens, and that's the reason for a forgive-and-forget ceremony Saturday that will see Montreal raise Roy's No. 33 to the rafters alongside several of the franchise's legendary names. "It is a great honor for me to join them," Roy said. "This is an organization with a great history and a great tradition and we had some great runs."

They did, which is why this is a no-brainer honor based on performance. Roy burst on the scene as a 20-year-old rookie and within a few months was leading another Stanley Cup parade for the Canadiens as the playoff MVP. That 1986 Cup ended a six-year championship drought for the Habs, their longest in a half century, making Roy an instant star and one who actually continued to get better.

Roy was a game-changing goalie during his 11 seasons with the Canadiens, winning three Vezinas, four Jennings for fewest goals allowed and a second Conn Smythe as playoff MVP when Montreal won the 1993 Stanley Cup. He also took the Canadiens to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1989 and was an All-Star six times.

Yet his epitaph in Montreal has always been his last game there. And it should be, even if all is apparently being forgiven now by the Canadiens. Montreal has 14 other numbers retired, half of them belonging to players who finished their careers elsewhere, but Roy was unique in the acrimonious way he turned his back on the team that made him an NHL star.

Montreal was already starting to head south when Roy blew up and might have continued down that path even had it hung on to the goaltender who was entering his prime career years. But the Canadiens never got to find out. Instead, they fell into a funk that lasted essentially until the lockout ended and obviously didn't include any more Stanley Cups.

In the meantime, Roy picked two more Stanley Cups and another Conn Smythe with Colorado.

"You always have some regrets, I mean, nobody's perfect," Roy said about his Montreal exit. "There's things -- but when you love to compete, and that's the way I was, (there) was a good side and bad side of it. But if I was not that type of person, I don't think I would have the career I had."

Roy had a brilliant, record-setting career and it landed him in the Hockey Hall of Fame last year. But arguably his entry had as much, if not more, to do with his time in Colorado than the team that is now too willing to make him a special part of its unique history.

Nothing wrong with that, except that Roy is a hockey icon today because of the Avalanche. He turned Colorado into an instant powerhouse and a Stanley Cup champion as soon as he arrived in Denver, and he did it just as the league was kicking its U.S. growth plans into high gear. To an entire generation of current hockey fans, he is forever associated with the Avalanche.

That was his choice and the Canadiens had to respect it. They don't necessarily have to honor it, though.

Roy, however, is grateful they will. "The people in Denver were really behind you and that made it great, but it all happened because of my years in Montreal," Roy said. "This is where it all started."