At the All-Star Game in South Florida recently, Colorado Avalanche all-world goaltender Patrick Roy reminded me that teams that expect to be fighting for the Stanley Cup don't sit back passively and not make moves that can help them be there when the National Hockey League championship is on the line.

And I'm not just talking about potential trades like the ones Avalanche General Manager Pierre Lacroix annually pulls out of his hat to make Colorado stronger. No, this was a deeper problem -- one that affected the core of the fabric that this two-time Stanley Cup championship team was built.

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Namely, Patrick Roy himself -- and the fact that earlier this season, the Avs were concerned about a Patty Melt -- worried that Roy needed a little fine-tuning, a little tweaking, if you will.

Even Roy expressed a little concern that he had lost a little something in his usually confident and effective demeanor.

"You could say I've lost a step of quickness in the past couple of years, but I always felt I made up for it with my knowledge of the game and the moves I could make to get me to the same position I might have glided to in the past," Roy said. "When you get to be 37 like me, maybe you rely more on technique and style."

Even after posting what he considered to be his best season -- a 1.94 goals-against average and nine shutouts, both career bests -- Roy could tell there was something wrong with his game earlier this season as he was struggling just to stay around .500. More distressing, he was not making some of the game-saving stops that allowed him to steal games like he has done for the Avalanche in the past.

"[General Manager] Pierre Lacroix asked what I thought about hiring Craig Billington to work with me and the rest of the goalies in the organization," Roy said of his former netminding partner for three seasons (1996-97 through 1998-99) with the Avs, who recently retired. "I said Craig would be the perfect guy for the job.

Roy admits to having "lost a step of quickness" but says he makes up for it with his knowledge of the game.

"He's a great student of the game -- and we were always on the same wavelength."

Whoa!

So how can Craig Billington coach the man most consider the best goaltender ever to play the game -- a presence in the nets that in his eight seasons in Colorado has led the Avs to two Stanley Cups, six Western Conference Finals and a record eight-consecutive division titles?

You might be surprised.

"I've been around long enough that I don't need someone to baby sit me," Roy said. "But Craig has a set of creative eyes that I trust. And we've already worked on a few of his ideas."

So what did Billington say to Roy?

"He told me he thought I was letting too many little things get too me," Roy said. "He asked: 'Why do you keep looking at the clock, it's like you are waiting for something bad to happen.'"

And obviously that's not the confident -- bordering on cocky -- Roy that we all have seen dominate the game, particularly in the playoffs over the years, now is it?

"Now, I'm back to focusing more on the opponents in front of me," Roy said. "No more demons. I'm seeing the game better, feeling more confident and ..."

Roy say he is seeing the game better and has regained his confidence after his early season struggles this year.

"It's like he's a man on a mission again," said Detroit Red Wings defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom. "He's out challenging the shooters more -- and it's like he's a coach on the ice again, yelling out instructions to his teammates."

Roy may seem aloof to some members of the media -- and may not talk about taking any of the blame when the team is not going well -- but he is always up front and goes out of his way to keep his teammates on their game.

"We all know what confidence he has," said Brodeur, who was recently out-dueled by the new and improved Roy in a great battle. "Well, I think he's got the swagger back -- and that Patrick Roy swagger often enables the Avalanche to win games they have no right to win."

I don't know about you, but to me it seems a little strange when you look around at other sports and see how baseball teams strive to find the right pitching coach and how football teams can't reconcile not having the right guy mentoring their quarterbacks. Answer this: Would Tiger Woods go into the next major tournament without having a session with swing guru Butch Harmon? No way.

In hockey, however, teams don't spend enough time making sure their key guy -- the goaltender -- gets the same kind of expert advice. Not every team has a goaltending coach and even fewer have one with the NHL club full-time.

But look at Jose Theodore's Most Valuable Player success in Montreal last season. Goalie coach Rollie Melanson was front and center in any conversation from Theodore about his success. Brodeur has always had Jacques Caron around for advice in New Jersey. The great success Marty Turco has had this season has not come without goalie coach Andy Moog's name being mentioned. And Roy had Francois Allaire as his mentor for many years in Montreal.

But this mentoring idea isn't widely accepted in the National Hockey League -- and I don't mean just bringing in some former college masked man and name him a guru. The NHL game in goal is far more difficult; and the right teacher is essential.

Several very good teams have made early playoff exits in recent years --Philadelphia, St. Louis, Vancouver and Boston -- primarily because of goaltending issues. Meanwhile, Roy welcomes a confidant to discuss ideas.

Voila! After the hiring of Billington on Jan. 11, the Avs went on a 10-1-2-1 run and renewed a challenge on the Vancouver Canucks for first place in the Northwest Division. The Play of Roy and the success of a line featuring Peter Forsberg, Milan Hejduk and Alex Tanguay has led the way.

Craig Billington has gone from being Patrick Roy's backup to his position coach.

One might argue that the Avalanche already had former goalie Jacques Cloutier as an assistant coach, but Cloutier wasn't the right fit to help Roy lead Colorado's run for another Stanley Cup.

Roy disagreed.

"It's not that I was playing bad," he said. "It's that I wasn't playing with consistency ... and focus night after night. I had some good games but then I'd have a shaky one.

"This year, with the quality of teams there are in the League, you have to be consistent every game."

And, when Roy is on his game, the rest of the Avalanche play with more of an edge as well.

"Unless you've played behind a goalie like Patrick, it's hard to realize just how easy it is to join in the fun, join in the flow, the tide of momentum that he gives the whole team," said Blues winger Shjon Podein, a former Roy teammate for Stanley Cups in 1996 and 2001. "The whole team tightens up defensively behind him -- and then the scoring chances just seem to follow."

I've always said goaltending is the most momentum-turning job in sports. Make a great save and feel the wave take your team right back down the ice for a goal. It happens so often.

I call it the Pied Piper syndrome -- and the confidence vs. the negative alternative is huge.

"If you've got a goalie who lets in the occasional soft goal at the most inappropriate time, you can feel the whole team's psyche fall down with him," said Lidstrom. "We felt that in our series against the Canucks last spring when they had us down 2-0 going back to Vancouver and [Dan] Cloutier gave up a soft goal from near center ice.

"And from our side, that's when Dominik Hasek became dominant for us and lifted our spirits enough to rally to win the series -- all after getting into that big 2-0 hole."

A warning to NHL shooters:

"Patrick is back on his game," said Blues center Doug Weight.

"And you know that that means at least one goal less per game against the Avs," said Philadelphia Flyers center Jeremy Roenick, who once had a great debate with Roy when he was in Chicago a few years back.

Remember Roy saying he couldn't hear Roenick's witty banter because he had Stanley Cup rings in his ears -- the kind Jeremy could only dream about?

That same Patrick Roy swagger is evident again and now, on most nights, you can't get anything by him. He is apparently still so good he can turn it on and off like a switch.

"It really all does start with Patrick," said Forsberg. "One day he just came to practice and started working really hard on every shot and the next game he was focused, talking to the guys on the ice a lot more and you could see he was into it and he was going to do something about the way we had been playing. From there, everything fell into place."

From there, the Pied Piper instilled that confidence in the Colorado Avalanche to make them a prime contender for this year's Stanley Cup.

Whoever said only another goalie can really understand what one of the NHL's masked men is going through couldn't be more correct.

And now, it's clear that Patrick Roy is no longer clock watching -- it's the opponents that feel like every game against Roy lasts a lifetime.

Veteran hockey writer Larry Wigge has covered the NHL since 1969