Golden Knights’ trust in Nicolas Roy fuels his rise

By Justin Emerson

Wednesday, April 28, 2021 | 2 a.m.

A half of a second is an eternity in a hockey game. 

That’s the difference between scoring and not scoring, taking the puck away or having a defender go by you — the difference, basically between a good game and bad one.

Golden Knights forward Nicolas Roy is familiar with that length of time. Earlier this season he was struggling to score and always seemed to be half a second behind.

But since the calendar flipped to April, he’s a half-second ahead of almost everyone. Four of his five goals on the season and eight of his 12 points have come in the last month, and Roy finally feels like everything is clicking.

“You’re making those small little plays, they come easier,” Roy said. “That half-second I was talking about, I guess it becomes way easier when you have that confidence and you’re playing well.”

He recorded an assist on opening night, and even though he felt like he continued to play well for the next stretch of games, he had just one goal and no assists over the next 19 games.

That takes its toll on a player. 

Much of hockey players’ internal analysis is process-based and not results-based, meaning if they feel like they’re playing well, they can come off the ice happy even if the numbers don’t back it up. Roy’s process was good for the first handful of games this year, but there comes a point when the lack of results starts to get discouraging and affects the process.

“I think he started out playing well, didn’t score, and I think that wore on him,” coach Pete DeBoer said. “He hit a patch where he wasn’t very good for probably a month and has climbed out of that hole and is now playing the way he’s capable of playing for us.”

Roy agreed with that. He was disappointed by his play, but something interesting happened to him that never had before: he stayed in the lineup. 

This is Roy’s fourth professional season, but the first in which he's spent its entirety with the NHL club instead of playing regularly in the minor leagues.

That opportunity to play every night, even when struggling, is a big reason why he was able to get back on track, he said. 

“It’s nice to have that confidence from the coaches,” Roy said. “In that stretch that we were talking about they were there to help me, watching video and practicing extra stuff after the practice. They helped me a lot there.”

He has four goals and eight points in his last 11 games, including the first two-point game of his career in Anaheim on April 18. That was his second game in a row with a goal, and in the April 16 game he stole the puck in the offensive zone and scored an unassisted goal. Someone joked after the game that Roy looked like Vegas captain Mark Stone, to which Roy laughed.

“Well I wish I could be like Mark Stone more often,” Roy said. “Not a bad player, I think.”

Roy does model his game after Stone, though, as he does for Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal from his time in Carolina. They’re all bigger forwards with a strong defensive reputation. In Stone and Staal’s case, they’ve been putting the puck in the net for years. For Roy, it’s still developing.

Roy believes he’s a future middle-six forward in the NHL, settling into a good team’s second or third line. He’s played mostly in the bottom-six — the third and fourth lines — this season, and has enjoyed plenty of success there lately.

Alex Tuch may be the star of the Golden Knights’ bottom-six with 17 goals this year, mostly from the third line, but he’s had plenty of support. Vegas acquired Mattias Janmark at the trade deadline to help stabilize the third line, while players like Roy, Tomas Nosek and Keegan Kolesar are enjoying breakout seasons in that role as well.

“I think it’s always important if all lines try to help the team to produce some points, especially bottom-six guys,” Nosek said. “It’s huge.”

The book on Roy when Vegas acquired him from Carolina in 2019 was that he was good defensively with a little offensive pop. He’s rarely failed to hold up the defensive end of the bargain, while the offense has come in waves so far in his young career.

And gaining that offensive consistency is important to Roy. There’s value in defensive-first forwards, but he wants people to think of him as a two-way threat that keeps the puck out of one net and buries it in the other.

It took some time for that second part to arrive. But the way Roy is playing in April, he’s making sure that first part becomes a permanent part of his game, too.

“I know I can score goals in the league, but I know I can also bring a lot of different things,” Roy said. “I can bring faceoffs, I can play (penalty kill), I can be reliable defensively, but also you always want to help your team offensively.”