Now Roy Knows How Tough This Is : Canadiens: Goaltender took success for granted when he won everything as a rookie in 1986.

MONTREAL â€”  Patrick Roy was baby-faced and barely out of his teens when he led the Canadiens to the 1986 Stanley Cup championship and added a chapter to the lore surrounding NHL goaltenders.

He wasn’t the first rookie goalie whose name was engraved on the Cup or even the first Montreal rookie: Ken Dryden had him on both counts, having led the Canadiens to the 1971 Cup before being voted rookie of the year in 1972.

Nor was Roy (pronounced wah ) the only goalie to be a slave to superstition, because nearly every member of the goaltending fraternity has an array of quirks.

What separated Roy from the peculiar pack was the nature of his ritual: He talked to his goal posts.

Some goalies smack the posts with their sticks--Quebec’s Ron Hextall does it to gauge his position--and others smack the posts with their lips, as onetime Islander Chico Resch did when the post made a stop he couldn’t. But no one had been seen chatting with them, a habit that endeared Roy to fans.

“Everything was new and different and fun,� he said.

Seven years later, that fresh face is masked by a beard and his innocence shredded by learning how fast friends flee when he doesn’t make saves. He also stopped talking to his posts, perhaps to avoid hearing from them the jeers he heard everywhere else when the Canadiens lost the 1989 finals to Calgary and were ousted in the second round of the playoffs each of the last three years.

“Especially last year, when we lost to Boston, people were not happy we didn’t compete well,� he said. “I won the Vezina (as the NHL’s best goalie) and was second for most valuable player, but I felt like I had a bad year.

“This year, I was not as consistent as in the past because my thinking was for the playoffs. Even then, we didn’t start as well as we would like (and trailed Quebec, 2-0), but we came back and won that series.�

Spurred by an impassioned speech from the once-shy goalie, the Canadiens rebounded to defeat their archrivals and win 12 of their next 13 games. It is of no small satisfaction to Roy that after being called “a candidate for burnout� in a preseason guide, he has helped the Canadiens reach the finals for the 32nd time since the NHL’s formation in 1917, extending the club’s record for appearances in the finals.

“It was a tough year for me at times, but I think I came through it a better goalie and a better person,� said Roy, who has a 2.15 playoff goals-against average after giving up 3.20 goals per game during the season. “Now, we want the Cup and we just have to win four more games to get it.�

Winning seemed to come easily to him. Chosen 51st overall in the 1984 draft, Roy made his NHL debut in the 1984-85 season. He played only one game for Montreal but earned rave reviews for leading Sherbrooke, the Canadiens’ top farm team, to the American Hockey League championship.

One dizzying year later, his name was on the Stanley Cup and on the Conn Smythe Trophy, awarded to the most valuable player in the playoffs.

“I thought it was easy to win the Cup. Now I realize it is tough. Lots of sacrifices and lots of commitments as a team have to be made,� he said. “I was there in ’89 and ‘86, and people don’t talk about the team that lost. They talk about the team that won.�

He has won enough individual trophies to stock a museum. Roy, 27, has been a first team all-star three times, won or shared the William Jennings Trophy (fewest goals against) four times, and won the Vezina Trophy three times. But in Montreal, where anything besides a Stanley Cup championship is deemed a failure, individual achievements mean little.

“The last three seasons his goaltending in the playoffs has been less than average, so there’s a lot of pressure on him this year and he’s handled it well,� said John Davidson, a former NHL goalie who is an analyst on ESPN hockey broadcasts. “Look what they’ve done in overtime: They’re 7-1, and he’s been a very steadying influence. And look at their one-goal wins in the playoffs (9-1). The goaltender wins those.�

He has won them by resisting the temptation to go to his knees, in what’s known as a butterfly style, instead standing to block high shots. When he does drop to the ice, his long legs and quick feet repel most low shots.

Roy wasn’t particularly sharp in the first two games against Quebec, but Coach Jacques Demers stayed with him. That show of faith inspired Roy to stand up before Game 3 and urge his teammates to have faith in each other.

“Another coach might have pulled me out, but not him. He said, ‘We’re going to keep you in there,’ and he did everything he could to make the team confident,� Roy said. “After that, it was time for us to get back out there and go for it.�

He knows the Kings will present a formidable obstacle in that quest.

“They have a strong offense, more than we faced against the Islanders,� he said. “(Wayne) Gretzky had a great game (Saturday) against the Maple Leafs, but I don’t want to focus too much on him because he has great teammates in (Jari) Kurri and Luc Robitaille and the (Mike) Donnelly line. They’re a pretty good team and balanced. It’s very important we play well on the defensive side.

“So far things are going very well for me, but I’m not thinking about that. The only thing on my mind is winning the Cup. That’s the only thing I’m focusing on.�