Nicolas Roy spent six seasons building a life in Las Vegas. A Stanley Cup championship. Deep playoff runs. Friendships that still matter. But when the puck drops Wednesday night at Ball Arena, none of that carries much weight anymore — because the former Golden Knight now stands directly in Vegas’ path to another Final.
The Colorado Avalanche forward will open the Western Conference Final against the franchise where he became a trusted playoff piece, and while the memories remain, the loyalties are temporarily shelved.
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“Just how it goes,” Roy said as Colorado prepared for Game 1 against Vegas. “The excitement’s already pretty high.”
Roy’s offseason exit from Vegas came suddenly.
The 29-year-old was dealt to Toronto in last summer’s blockbuster trade that sent Mitch Marner to the Golden Knights, a move Roy admitted caught him off guard.
“As a player, you expect (a trade like this) more at the deadline than right there in the middle of the summer,” said Roy, who’s currently renting out his Las Vegas home to a Golden Knights player. “But again, you never know. It’s part of the business. It can happen at any given day. I just got surprised a little by it.”
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Marner has delivered exactly what Vegas hoped for, leading the club with 18 playoff points — seven goals and 11 assists — through series victories over Utah and Anaheim.
Roy’s stay in Toronto, meanwhile, didn’t last long.
After recording five goals and 15 assists in 59 games with the Maple Leafs, he was moved again at the March 5 deadline, this time to Colorado in exchange for draft picks.
The transition could have been awkward. Instead, it’s looked seamless.
Roy has quietly become one of Colorado’s most dependable depth forwards during this postseason, contributing three goals and three assists through the opening two rounds while fitting naturally into Jared Bednar’s structure.
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“All the other guys here made it so easy from the first day,” Roy said. “The coaches did a good job with me, of letting me know how to play the system. The guys talk to me a lot on the ice as well.”
Bednar said the Avalanche coaching staff revisited plenty of film from Roy’s Vegas tenure — including the Golden Knights’ 2023 Stanley Cup run — to better understand how to maximize his game.
“We tried to figure out how we would deploy him, and could we get him back to playing as well or better than he did in Vegas. Because he was a highly effective player for them,” Bednar said. “The one thing that I’ve been impressed with is his patience with the puck. He never throws the puck away. … He’s got a lot of patience for a guy with the production that he has.”
That patience already produced one massive moment for Colorado.
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Roy scored the overtime winner in Game 2 of the Avalanche’s first-round sweep over the Los Angeles Kings, marking the second playoff OT goal of his career.
“I’m in a great situation right now,” said Roy, a 2015 fourth-round pick by Carolina who appeared in just seven games with the Hurricanes before eventually finding his footing in Vegas. “Just trying to keep doing my best.”
If anyone inside Colorado’s locker room understands Vegas’ tendencies, systems, and habits, it’s Roy.
Even with John Tortorella replacing Bruce Cassidy behind the bench, much of the Golden Knights’ identity remains familiar to him. So do the players — from Mark Stone and Jack Eichel to longtime linemate Keegan Kolesar.
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“Obviously, I know their system and I know a little bit their player tendencies, as they know mine,” Roy said. “I don’t think it’s a big advantage. The game is just so fast, you don’t want to overthink, you just want to play your game.”
Roy remembers all too well what Vegas did to Colorado in 2021, when the Golden Knights stormed back from a 2-0 series deficit in the second round to eliminate the Avalanche in six games.
This time, though, the perspective has changed.
Now he’s wearing burgundy and blue instead of gold.
And standing four wins away from another trip to the Stanley Cup Final.
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