It was a moment of radio that made the world of hockey tremble.
An intimate, unexpected, destabilizing interview. On the waves of the 98.5 FM, Michèle Piuze, ex-wife of Patrick Roy, broke a long silence. She emptied her bag. And without even wanting it, she provoked an emotional concussion in the Quebec media and sporting world.
For more than ten years, Michèle and Patrick did not speak. Two volcanoes. Two excessive temperaments. But beyond the divorce, it is the separation of a mother with her children who deeply marked her:
“Patrick and I did not talk to each other for 10 years. We were two intense.
I said to myself: I get my children removed. I realize several years after, in the end, it was not correct. The test was not divorce, it was the separation of my children. »»
That’s not all. What dull the listeners is also the disturbing admission of this mother on an unknown, vulnerable Patrick Roy, inhabited by deep beliefs.
“I never said that, but Patrick was praying every night when he was going to play hockey … before the match. »»
The emotion reached a summit when she told the circumstances of their reunion, orchestrated by their daughter Jana. A dinner at the restaurant of John Elway, in Denver. A suspended moment:
“He kisses my two cheeks. I swear, it’s like we were the best friends in the world that evening. And this heartbreaking scene where the girl, in tears, calls for her brothers by FaceTime to immortalize the found peace.
“I had still evolved. I had been in India, I had been in Thailand, I had been in the Maldives doing meditation business, then it looks like I was more open. »»
“Patrick had reserved a table in a corner. Then he goes to see John Elway (Broncos legend) to say to him: ‘I want the table in the middle of the restaurant.’ ‘
We settled down. We discussed me, Patrick and Jana. My daughter began to cry and she zoomed out with her two brothers saying: ” The guys, look where I am today. ” We all opened our phones and we started to cry the five. ”
But this testimony could have been a simple moment of emotion if he had not rekindled much heavier memories.
Because Michèle Piuze was also, in the past, at the heart of a judicial scandal. In 2003, she composed the 911 after a violent argument. Roy then smashed two doors. He had been arrested. The image of the star goalkeeper, handcuffed, had gone around the country.
The case had been classified, but it had left traces for life. And even today, the simple fact that Michèle returns publicly to her relationship with Roy revives this collective memory.
She does not deny the conflict, but she places it in the context of a couple who are too intense, too passionate, unable to speak to each other for a decade.
This media outing has gained an unexpected magnitude. Because at the same time, the name of Patrick Roy is at the heart of the news in New York.
His job as a head coach of the Islanders is pending. And while Roy waits, his private life is again scrutinized, peeled, dissected.
As if that were not enough, Donald Brashear, too, adds. The former toughness of the Canadian told Radio X an incredible scene on Radio X: Patrick Roy exchanging punch with a teammate in the CH locker room. All under the eyes of Mario Tremblay. A detail that hurts:
-“What he impressed me was that they were co-chambermers before. »»
Rumors were rumored. Everyone thought of Mathieu Schneider. Especially since in the 90s, another rumor was circulating: that of a relationship between Michèle Piuze and Schneider. A rumor that she has always denied intensity, but which has long poisoned her name. And who, even today, reappears with this testimony.
Remember. It was summer 2019. And that’s where a fairly surreal moment exploded the radio X lines.
In the midst of noon, replacement animators told a crisp story of the late 1990s: an NHL goalkeeper would have demanded an exchange because his wife would have had an affair with a teammate … and that a fight in the locker room would have broken out, in Philadelphia, between the two men.
A few seconds later, the implication was clear: it was Patrick Roy and Mathieu Schneider. Even more disturbing: the animators even mentioned that this story would have inspired Réjean Tremblay and Fabienne Larouche in the writing of the Mask TV.
Hearing that, Michèle Piuze literally jumped on the phone. She called for the reception of Radio X, demanded to speak to the presenters in the waves … and intervened live to put an end to what she described as pure invention.
“I have never slept with a Patrick teammate,” she hammered firmly.
“I am friends with Mathieu Schneider, yes, but I have nothing to do with this story. »»
But you have to face reality: Michèle Piuze did serve as inspiration for Quebec fictions. The “Le Masque” series, with Patrice L’Écuyer, told the life of an ex-Garden of troubled hockey, and many have seen a nod to Patrick Roy. The main female character also shared several features with Michèle and held an affair with one of her teammates.
The real question, now, is this: why speak now? Why tell everything at this precise moment when Patrick Roy is on the hot seat? Is it a coincidence or a calculated speech?
Some will say that Michèle wanted to turn the page, to humanize her ex-husband, to show that he is more than his image of angry man.
Others will see a media maneuver, voluntary or not, which adds a layer of complexity to an already difficult spring for Roy.
Because beyond his career as a coach, it is all his future in the NHL that is at stake. And now his past, his family injuries, his internal conflicts resurface as a oil spill.
It must be said frankly: Patrick Roy is experiencing a waking nightmare. On the ice, he waits to be fixed. In the media, he is brought back to his past. And in his personal life, the memories he would have preferred to bury come back to haunt the headlines.
Quebec is shaken. Hockey is shaken. And even if this interview was perhaps aimed to reconcile, to heal, it has just reopened a gaping wound.
That of a man who was adored, then exiled, then rehabilitated, and that one looks again with a mixture of fascination and discomfort.
This text is not intended to judge. But to say the essential: behind the masks, there are human beings. And Michèle Piuze, telling her truth, forced everyone to look at Patrick Roy from another angle.
A raw angle. A painful angle. A angle … Fragile …
