In the span of five minutes at the Bell Centre Saturday night, the Canadiens season was quite literally cut off at the knees.
First it was David Reinbacher falling after an awkward hit and being helped off the ice.
Then the gut punch felt by the entire Canadiens organization, by fans from Perth to Poland and most of all by Patrik Laine, who lay crumpled on the ice, the latest victim of an age-old disparity in hockey.
Begging the question: In that instant before his knee turned Laine’s leg into a parenthesis, did Cédric Paré think, “I’m gonna hurt this guy”?
Almost certainly not.
Did Paré think to himself, “uh-oh — I’m about to get beat”?
Almost certainly.
Paré lunges with the knee. Laine crumples. The referees somehow contrive to see nothing wrong with a blatant knee-on-knee hit, intentional or otherwise. Once again, they fail to act as the first line of player protection.
Paré is a 25-year-old left wing from Lévis who has yet to play a single regular-season game in the NHL. He’s gone from the Belleville Senators to the Colorado Eagles to the Toronto Marlies without creating so much as a ripple.
Until now.
Fans of 31 or the league’s 32 teams corkscrew themselves into the ground dreaming up explanations that contradict the clear visual evidence. Fans who watch games wearing their Auston Matthews jammies go farther, damning Laine beating up Paré’s knee with his leg.
Let’s cut the crap. It was a dirty hit. Intended to stop Laine, perhaps, not to injure him, but the fact that the damage was accidental should not absolve Paré. If you try to lift a player’s stick and clip him in the chin and draw blood, it’s still a double minor, accidental or not.
Argue all you want about the hit itself, the effect is undeniable. The game has lost one of its feel-good stories, at least for a time. After all he has been through, Laine was on the way back. He was visibly buoyant, elated to be in Montreal, playing crisp, exciting hockey in his brief pre-season turn, hoping to reclaim at least some of the promise with which he broke into the league.
Now all that is on hold and we’re left to wonder how long this horrendous run of season and career-ending injuries will go on.
As of this writing, we know no more about Laine’s condition than we knew Saturday night. At best, the Canadiens playoff hopes have taken a body blow. Laine’s injury will test the club’s depth and resilience. He was the wild card, the player whose extraordinary talents might speed the rebuild by months or years.
Now the Habs have to go back to the drawing board. Kent Hughes has been as adept as any GM in the league at plugging holes with deft deals — but with the season almost upon us, this one might be beyond his considerable powers.
Stumbling into October: Over the past four or five games, the Alouettes have not been the team that basically clinched a playoff spot halfway through the season.
They still lead the CFL with a 11-3-1 record, but their recent play has been spotty, up to and including the wild 37-31 loss on a rainy field in Toronto Saturday night. The receiving corps is badly banged up, the run defence has been shaky, the pass rush underwhelming, the play of quarterback Cody Fajardo less than stellar.
But the Als still hold the advantage. They’re going into a bye week and they’ll get another bye heading into the playoffs. The scarier part is that Reggie White Jr. appeared to injure a knee on the last play of the game. I have seen no follow-up report, but a team already missing Tyson Philpot and Austin Mack cannot afford to lose another receiver.
Meanwhile, the Oakland A’s follow the Expos into oblivion: Anyone who has been following the John Fisher saga with the Oakland A’s had to be feeling a bit nauseous last week when Fisher opened up with the crocodile tears and claimed that all he ever wanted was to keep the A’s in Oakland.
Right. And all Jeffrey Loria ever wanted was to keep the Expos in Montreal. Like all owners who move or threaten to move teams, Fisher is lying. If he wanted to keep the A’s in Oakland, he would have built a new ballpark. He has the means and then some. But Fisher preferred to do a Loria — and that empty suit Rob Manfred let him get away with it.
As someone said of Bud Selig Jr., Manfred leads the league in stolen dreams.
Heroes: Patrik Laine, David Reinbacher, Arber Xhekaj, Dionté Ruffin, Walter Fletcher, Cole Spieker, James Letcher Jr., Christine Sinclair, Maggie Mac Neil, Diana Taurasi, Napheesa Collier, Joshua Roy, Oliver Kapanen, Jakub Dobes, Lane Hutson, &&&& last but not least, the late, lamented Oakland A’s.
Zeros: Cédric Paré, George Parros, the Department of Player Safety, Mark Shapiro, Ross Atkins, John Fisher, Rob Manfred, Deion Sanders, Aaron Rodgers, Bev Priestman, John Herdman, WADA, Bud Selig Jr., Claude Brochu, David Samson &&&& last but not least, Jeffrey Loria.
Now and forever.