Jonathan Drouin: senseless humiliation

DAY

Martin St-Louis and Kent Hughes have really dropped in my esteem. They don't care, but I don't really care that they care. 

I've seen coaches and taouins humiliate hockey players. It goes back to Dick Irvin, the father who forced Dickie Moore to walk on all fours in the locker room and it goes through Jacques Lemaire who sent Guy Lafleur to serve a bench penalty or Mario Tremblay who wanted to play tough with Patrick Roy with disastrous results for the Canadian…

It was moron and I wrote it.

And I understand just as much that Jonathan Drouin is a bitter disappointment for his bosses and for the fans and fans of the Canadiens. Just as I understand that the coaches and general managers who had to juggle the Drouin case may have exhausted their patience.

But that does not give the right to humiliate a man like Martin St-Louis and Kent Hughes did. They could take disciplinary action. But fair. Weighted by severity of offence. There were ways. But they had no right to do what they did. The public death penalty, the lynching on television disappeared from manners on January 1, 2023. And it's March.

IT'S DISGUSTING

Jonathan Drouin arrived two minutes late for a team meeting in Tampa. You should know that the team hotel in Tampa is located a five-minute walk from the arena. On the other side of a large parking lot. Let's say there is no congested traffic excuse. I agree.

Many other players have already missed the start of a meeting. Peter Stastny infuriated Michel Bergeron by jumping on the bus just seconds before departure. It was settled in private. They were never crucified in public as we did with Drouin.

Make him put on the uniform because an obscure rule requires the team to have 20 players in uniform, sit him on the bench with television cameras trained on his face for three hours and let hundreds of thousands of people speculate and gauging his reactions during an evening is insane. It is unreasonable and cruel. In today's media world. With the planet as a witness to lick each other? It's unspeakable.

Other solutions

There were other solutions that protected a man's dignity. Especially since the Canadian knows he is a fragile man. We could get an employee to sign a contract, bring in a guy from the minors or even have Drouin play the game to help the team, even if it meant letting him eat his hot dogs in the press box tonight at the Bell Center in safe from sadists.

The Canadian knew it. Hughes and St-Louis have no excuses. Jonathan Drouin was so psychologically fragile that he was sent back from Calgary so that he could heal and recuperate in Montreal for an entire spring. So bad and fragile that Drouin didn't play a playoff game, a miracle of the 2021 pandemic. 

And the same fragile guy is used as a piece of meat to fill a uniform for three hours with cameras in the face! No, but, did you fall on your head?

You couldn't just endure it until the end of the season and give it a little farewell party with a nice press release from Chantal for wish him good luck. Antarctica perhaps?

In the meantime, Glorious in my heart, you are 1-9 in the last ten games. It's all your faces that should be shown for three hours on TV!

Shame should be shared.

A “ five stars ” at the Casino

This will be the first “five star” fight to ever be presented at the Casino de Montreal. Christian MBilli against Carlos Gongora of Ecuador. Since the fight between Roberto Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard at the Olympic Stadium in 1980, it will be the 13th “five-star” of the last 43 years. Jean Pascal was involved in 6 of those 13 fights, with Adonis Stevenson being the other big medalist. David Lemieux presented Laval's only five star, and Artur Beterbiev against Marcus Browne was the last to do so at the Bell Centre.

But a “five star” at the Casino? In front of 600 pampered people, it never happened, and you might as well savor it. I can't see how it could happen again.

To obtain a “five stars” from BoxRec, it takes two very high level opponents and great competitiveness between the two opponents. Christian MBilli and Carlos Gongora fulfill these conditions. And I hope for the rest of things that Christian MBilli will fight the fight of his life against an extremely dangerous opponent. What's more, he's left-handed.

PASCAL WANTS TO CONTINUE

I spoke with Jean Pascal yesterday morning. Morale is holding up, but the Champadmits that it is the most difficult defeat of his career to take.

“Because it is totally unforeseen”. Pascal intends to continue his career even if he admits that he was horribly flat on the night of the fight. “But I know what I did that diminished me so much. It's a mistake I won't make again,” he said.

But Pascal is smart. He wants to continue, but there is no question that he will serve as a pâté offered to promising young people who want to make a name for themselves. It will have to be worth the effort. 

It is curious, this is precisely what happened with the young Ahmed Elbiali in Miami. PBC wanted to mount its new star on American television and Pascal had to serve as a step. We remember the rest… a series of fights against Marcus Browne, Dimitri Bivol, Badou Jack, Fanlong Meng later…