Poll: Patrick Roy among the coaches who are not favored by the players

For the past few years, The Athletic has had a very interesting concept: the media surveys players regarding various issues related to their sport. Obviously, these are anonymous surveys, but they provide insight into the players’ perceptions on different hot topics.

And the anonymous format allows guys to speak their minds. It results in interesting findings.

The exercise was conducted again with NHL players, and besides seeing that Gary Bettman is a divisive commissioner, we learned a bit about the coaches and their popularity ratings across the league.

Martin St. Louis, for example, is a well-liked coach (not as much as Jon Cooper, who is by far the most popular, but still)… but not all can say the same.

Among those who cannot, there is… Patrick Roy, who came in sixth place on the question “For which coach would you not want to play?”

My favorite part of compiling this player poll was the ambivalence guys had toward John Tortorella — like, they think they don’t want to play for him, but they’re also really curious what it’d be like.

Also, the guy who really, REALLY hates Philly.https://t.co/spohGQLCcb

— Mark Lazerus (@MarkLazerus) February 5, 2025

Without surprise, it was John Tortorella who came in first with 38.46% of the votes (out of 93 respondents). Behind him were Bruce Cassidy (we’ll get back to that), Mike Babcock (who is no longer in the league, but remains unpopular), Greg Cronin, and Lindy Ruff.

Then, it’s the Islanders’ coach who appears, with 4.62% of the votes.

Obviously, the sample doesn’t cover the entire NHL, so we don’t know how widely shared that sentiment is throughout the league. That said, seeing Roy’s name in this category is still surprising.

Is his reputation for being demanding catching up with him? It’s not impossible.

Returning to Bruce Cassidy, seeing him in second place is surprising. After all, he has a solid track record in Boston and Vegas… but you can sense that he is not popular regardless.

I imagine the current noise about Logan Thompson being ignored by Canada for the Four Nations Showdown because Cassidy reportedly advised against it after a bad experience in Vegas won’t help him… because Thompson is really the best option in the country right now.

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