Roy’s Illness Turns Out to Be Pain for Ex-Duck Tugnutt

Be careful what you wish for.

Ron Tugnutt dreamed of playing time. Then Patrick Roy got appendicitis.

Tugnutt had gone from alternating in goal for the Mighty Ducks with Guy Hebert to backing up Roy in Montreal.

That’s like backing up the Maytag repairman. There’s very little work involved.

But when Roy was hospitalized before Game 3 of the Canadiens’ first-round playoff series against Boston, the job fell suddenly on Tugnutt’s startled shoulders.

“He’s like the Prime Minister up here,” said Tugnutt, who was traded to Montreal for Stephan Lebeau on Feb. 20. “Everybody was joking about it. They all said, ‘You’ve got the toughest job in the world today.’ ”

By his own admission, Tugnutt wasn’t exactly ready.

“Usually I go in thinking I’m going to win. But this time it was, ‘Just don’t lose it for the team.’ ”

He did, 6-3.

Boston took a 2-1 series lead, and even though Roy got out of his hospital bed and put on the pads for the final four games, the defending Stanley Cup champions were eliminated in the first round, 4-3. Roy, rather remarkably, gutted out four games before undergoing an appendectomy after the series concluded.

“I was really disappointed I didn’t get to show people I could do better,” Tugnutt said. “I wanted a chance to redeem myself.

“I was told the day before (Game 4), ‘You’re going to play tomorrow.’ I was really excited to show I could play better, but I got to the rink for the morning skate and the first thing I see is Patrick has everything set up the way he does before he plays.”

With the Ducks, Tugnutt played in 28 games and was 10-15-1 with a 3.16 goals-against average. He was in goal the first time the expansion team won, a 4-3 victory over Edmonton on Oct. 13. He was the star of the team’s November turnaround when the Ducks were 4-0 on a Western Canada trip, stopping 120 of 124 shots in three games.

But after the Ducks decided they’d do away with the alternating goalie system and go with Hebert, Tugnutt found himself sitting idle in Montreal. That’s what happens when you play behind Roy.

“I was an outsider. I felt I wasn’t contributing,” Tugnutt said. “I wanted to be a part of the team, but when you don’t contribute, you don’t feel like you’re helping the team. You really feel like the odd man out. I got to know the guys well, but I played almost 30 games in Anaheim, then started maybe six the final two months.

“It’s tough, because Patrick wants to play almost every game. We all want to play every game, but he deserves to.”

Tugnutt might be the only player in NHL history who was disappointed to go from an expansion team to the Canadiens.

“I loved it out there (in Anaheim),” he said from the lakeside home in Buckhorn, Ontario, where he and his wife, Lisa, and their new baby, Jacob, will spend the summer. “It was by far my best year, but the finish was disappointing. Every other time I’ve been traded, I was happy when I left. Not this time.”

He did get to enjoy a jab at the Ducks’ expense when he returned to Anaheim on March 2, and beat them, 5-2. And he got in another jab after he saw Hebert’s ESPN sports fantasy commercial and called up his buddy just to laugh into the answering machine.

But when Montreal’s season ended, it was in disappointment.

When Tugnutt got the call for Game 3, he says he’d hardly played in three weeks. He was 2-3-1 with a 3.16 GAA with the Canadiens. What was more, he says, he hadn’t been eating well because he’d felt ill.

But you have to be ready when the call comes, and Tugnutt wasn’t.

“I didn’t play my best,” he said.

The Montreal reporters and fans--usually at the ready when someone falters--actually seemed to feel empathy for the player who had to try to fill Roy’s skates. Tugnutt made the good tactical decision of facing the criticism head-on.

“A lot of players I know, after off nights, go run and hide and don’t face the press,” Tugnutt said. “I did that once in the past and it got me in trouble. Usually if you go out and face the music, they appreciate what you have to say. Some people even wrote good things. They said, ‘Understand, it’s not easy to replace this guy, not in the heat of a battle with your rivals.’ A couple even said, ‘He’ll do better next time.’ I had some telegrams and faxes wishing me good luck after that.”

He didn’t get another chance, though, and even Roy faltered in Game 7, losing, 5-3. The Canadiens won’t win their 25th Stanley Cup this year.

“It was really disappointing, because we really had a lot of injuries and were really beat up, yet you could see there was a lot of heart,” Tugnutt said. “Mike Keane, Lyle Odelein, Kirk Muller, those guys were all playing with injuries they wouldn’t have played with if it hadn’t been the playoffs.

“The fans were great the whole series, but once we lost they did not take too kindly to that. They’re still doing talk shows, with the players, the coaches, the GM. ‘What’s the problem? What’s the matter?’ They only expect one thing, the Stanley Cup, and we fell well short of that.”