A FAN’S NOTES

My Kingdom for the Reincarnation of Jean Beliveau

My retirement has been fretful. While I don’t fear for my job and its paycheque any more nor sweat its deadlines, I’ve managed to roil that disused brain space with the weight of the world.

Last Tuesday morning, much too early to be moody blue, I read with a sinking heart The Globe and Mail’s lead article detailing the joint American-Israeli peace plan for Palestine, a place that does not yet exist even though it does just as Israel once did not. The Middle East is a poxy, proxy combative place on the globe: one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire the region has alternately festered or erupted, a planetary boil.

The story was written by Mark MacKinnon, the Globe’s Senior International Correspondent and datelined Beirut.  Its second paragraph was despairingly illuminating: “Mr. Trump’s proposal was unveiled hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was indicted on corruption charges and as Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial continued in the U.S. Senate.” Are these two characters the best we can offer to soothe a modern century’s litany of conflict and tragedy in the Middle East? And wouldn’t you at least run the plan past the other interested party?

Sometimes the Big Lie is so big that you can’t see the forest for the pulp mill. I turned over a new leaf of newsprint. The sports section. Professional sport is the ultimate, lowest common denominator of distraction because everybody can relate to something that doesn’t matter a whit. This big, self-important, statistically driven entertainment that seems to drive public works for private interests is essentially about nothing. Mindless and meaningless provided you’re not a gambler, whereas art, literature and music may gently or jarringly alter your perception of reality.

I keep a heavy lidded half eye on Canadian football, England’s Premiership and baseball’s major leagues but the only professional sports club with whom I consistently engage is the Montreal Canadiens. My team has been middling, average for more than a generation; frustrating to follow. The perversity of mediocrity is that the club is never terrible enough to be in the running to draft the reincarnation of Jean Beliveau, a man so gracious and upstanding he refused an appointment as Canada’s Governor-General and whose skills as a player current hockey writers would gush over as “generational.”

As of this morning the club has 29 games remaining in the regular season. They have lost five games more than they have won to this point. Montreal is eight points out of a playoff spot with three teams with games in hand to leapfrog. Postseason play doesn’t seem out of the question until you remember that the other clubs are obligated to show up for their remaining 30 contests. No Canadiens skater registers on the list of the league’s top 20 scorers. Goaltender Carey Price, the face of the franchise, whose other-worldly years appear to be behind him, seems exhausted and despairingly all too human. The realization has sunken in that this club and its mildly varied past incarnations in the previous seven or eight seasons never really had a championship window.

The consensus among Habs fans I’ve chatted with is that it’s time to trade Price provided the club can move his monstrous contract. The sentiment is a strange one. It’s not so much get rid of the bum but a collective act of charity, give this guy a shot at a Stanley Cup, let him regain his form backstopping a contending team that won’t allow so many shots on net. Price is far from done. Last night he registered the 47^th shutout in his career as a Canadien, one better than the legendary Ken Dryden. Canadiens Nation is infamous for its torches, pitchforks and cries for lynchings. The mob’s outpouring of goodwill speaks to Price’s personality, character and popularity in the city. “We wish you well” is very different from “Good riddance.”

The Canadiens management reminds me of an entrenched, corrupt regime. The original masterminds have long since departed. The new boys haven’t the finesse and know-how of their forebears. And those minions who cannot abide the diktat of endless, unsuccessful Five Year Plans are ruthlessly disposed of, often in their primes. The organization is stunningly adept at parading history and flying moth-eaten ancient glory because the latest strategies have been so disastrous. A fan’s question is fair, “Is this the best you can do?”

Oh, the best laid and ill-fated plans… From the Middle East to Montreal, there is no joy. From a homeland to hockey, it seems most of us are prepared to settle for the third-rate with small complaint; jury-rigged and gerry-built sweet fuck all sold by charlatans of all stripes. Dylan sings, “It’s not dark yet but it’s getting there.” And so here we are now without the likes of Jean Beliveau anywhere on any horizon.

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of sports writing and opinion since 2013. Sign up for e-mail alerts from the Crooked 9.