Management loves a spreadsheet.
They love the predictability of a graph that trends upward at a steady, forty-five-degree angle. In the Bell Centre’s front office, Joshua Roy is less of a hockey player and more of a data point they’re trying to optimize. But right now, the optimization looks a lot like bureaucratic stalling.
The Montreal Canadiens are currently running a masterclass in over-engineering a rebuild. They’ve got the "Process." They’ve got the "Plan." And then they’ve got Joshua Roy, a 21-year-old who has spent the last year being treated like a software update that management is too terrified to push to the live server.
Roy is the classic late-round steal. A fifth-round pick who figured it out. He’s got the vision. He’s got the hands. He’s got that weird, innate ability to be in the right place before the puck even knows it’s going there. Last season, he didn't just look like he belonged in the NHL; he looked like one of the few players on the roster who actually understood the geometry of the game.
So, naturally, they sent him back to Laval.
It’s the "Laval Shuttle"—a purgatory for talent that needs to "ripen." But Roy isn't a green banana. He’s a productive asset being mothballed because the organization is obsessed with defensive metrics and "playing the right way." It’s the hockey equivalent of a tech firm refusing to launch a killer app because the UI font isn't perfect.
The friction here isn't about Roy’s talent. It’s about the cap sheet and the ego of the "System." Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton are trying to build a perpetual motion machine, a roster where every piece fits a specific financial and tactical profile. Roy, with his $827,500 entry-level hit, should be the ultimate market inefficiency. He’s cheap labor that produces top-six results.
Instead, he’s a victim of the Canadiens' own version of tech debt. The roster is clogged with legacy code—expensive, aging veterans like Brendan Gallagher and Josh Anderson who eat up minutes and cap space while providing a fraction of the output. Management can't delete these files yet; the contracts are too heavy to move. So, they keep Roy in the minor leagues, ostensibly to "develop," but really because they don't have a seat for him in the boardroom.
It’s a classic middle-management trap. They’re A/B testing Roy’s career in the AHL while the main product is a buggy, losing mess. The coaching staff talks about "consistency" and "details." It’s code. It means they’d rather have a guy who never makes a mistake because he never tries anything than a guy who takes a risk to actually win a game.
Fans are told to be patient. We’re told that rushing a prospect is the cardinal sin of the modern era. But there’s a difference between protecting a player and suppressing him. When Roy is on the ice in Montreal, the puck stays in the offensive zone. When he’s in Laval, he’s playing against guys who are three steps behind his brain. You don’t learn how to beat NHL goaltenders by scoring on guys who will be selling insurance in three years.
The Canadiens are treating Roy like a luxury they can’t afford to use yet. They’re saving him for a rainy day, forgetting that it’s currently pouring. If you spend too much time over-analyzing the "readiness" of your best assets, you eventually realize you’ve optimized your way into a talent deficit.
The kid has done everything asked of him. He slimmed down. He fixed his skating. He learned how to backcheck. He’s a polished piece of hardware sitting in a box because the IT department is worried about the power draw.
At some point, you have to stop looking at the projections and just play the game. You can only keep a player in the "beta" phase for so long before he realizes the organization is more interested in the process than the results.
Is this actually about Roy’s development, or is it just management being too scared to admit their expensive veterans are obsolete?