Breaking: Insider reveals the real reason Matt Duchene wanted to be traded.

Shocking comments from NHL insider.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 6 years ago
Breaking: Insider reveals the real reason Matt Duchene wanted to be traded.

It seems there was much more to the Matt Duchene trade than may have met the eye. 

While it was clear for quite some time prior to the trade actually materializing that we knew the Colorado Avalanche were trying to trade him, we never really understood why, and a National Hockey League legend may be at the center of it all. 

TSN insider Bob McKenzie was a guest on Ottawa's TSN 1200 radio when he revealed that Duchene's issues with the Avalanche began when comments from Patrick Roy rubbed him the wrong way.

“And in fairness to Duchene, he wasn’t always an unhappy camper," said McKenzie as per Fanrag's Chris Nichols. "He started to be an unhappy camper around the time that Patrick Roy kind of threw him under the bus in Roy’s last year there where in a blowout game Duchene celebrated a goal when they were getting beat by five or six. He scored and after the game Patrick Roy said, ‘What is that’ and basically publically rebuked and admonished Duchene for celebrating in a game where the Avalanche were getting the tar beaten out of them."

It's an incredibly interesting reveal from McKenzie, especially when you consider that Roy quit as the team's head coach shortly after. It's one thing to quit on your team, it's another matter entirely when you do so right after alienating their star player so badly that he no longer wants to play there even after you're gone. 

To be fair to Roy however, it seems things really boiled over when Duchene got word that general manager Joe Sakic was trying to deal him. 

“And it wasn’t long after that the word filtered out at the beginning of last season that Joe Sakic and the Avalanche were shopping Matt Duchene. And when Matt Duchene heard that, I think he was pretty upset about it. So he didn’t always want out."

While many have criticized Sakic for dragging out this deal, myself included, things take on a whole new light when you consider that Duchene himself may have been the one pushing for this trade all along. 

Source: