{"id":147306,"date":"2025-09-16T04:41:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T04:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/147306\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T04:41:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T04:41:07","slug":"islanders-duclair-says-roy-apologized-for-calling-his-play-god-awful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/147306\/","title":{"rendered":"Islanders’ Duclair says Roy apologized for calling his play ‘god-awful’"},"content":{"rendered":"

OLD WESTBURY, N.Y. \u2014 Patrick Roy and Anthony Duclair<\/a> cleared the air this summer after the Hall of Fame goaltender-turned-New York Islanders<\/a> coach\u00a0sharply criticized the winger\u2019s play publicly late last season.<\/p>\n

Roy after\u00a0a loss in early April\u00a0said Duclair was \u201cgod-awful\u201d and \u201cnot playing up to what we expect from him.\u201d\u00a0Duclair took a leave of absence\u00a0and did not play another game.<\/p>\n

Duclair said Roy drove to his off-season home in Montreal to apologize, and they each expressed a desire to move past the awkward situation. Duclair explained he was still dealing with the effects of a groin injury that sidelined him for two months.<\/p>\n

\u201cI told him I didn\u2019t need an apology \u2014 I just needed him to know I was playing hurt, and he told me he didn\u2019t really know the extent of the injury,\u201d Duclair said Monday at the Islanders’ annual charity golf tournament. \u201cI think it was just a miscommunication by everybody, myself included. He just obviously thought I was playing (at) 100 per cent, which I wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roy thought the conversation with Duclair went \u201creally, really well\u201d and regretted his postgame comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an emotional game, and sometimes you\u2019re saying things, but the outcome didn\u2019t do anything good for us,\u201d Roy said. \u201cI feel like it almost was negative more than anything else, and I think Anthony had a lot of trust in me, and I felt like I let him down a little bit there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duclair, who turned 30 on Aug. 26, said his groin muscle was torn completely off the bone last October and did not heal as quickly as expected. After two goals in five games before getting hurt, he had just five along with four assists in his next 39, culminating in Roy ripping him for not skating and not competing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in a performance sport, and we have expectations and I\u2019m sure Anthony has his, but it\u2019s behind me now and I want to move forward to this year and really hope that Anthony will start like he did because he had a really good start,\u201d Roy said. “When he came back from his injury, it was a little tougher for him for some reasons. But I want him to be who he was before he got hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duclair scored 24 goals in the 2023-24 season for San Jose and Tampa Bay and signed a four-year, $14 million contract with the Islanders as an unrestricted free agent. Going into the second season of that deal and after spending more time rehabbing, he is working toward finally being fully healthy for opening night.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy focus is Game 1 of the regular season and being ready for that,\u201d Duclair said. \u201cGoing to take all the time that\u2019s needed during training camp, preseason, whatever it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roy figures Duclair will start camp on the third line with Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Simon Holmstrom.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OLD WESTBURY, N.Y. \u2014 Patrick Roy and Anthony Duclair cleared the air this summer after the Hall of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-147306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}