The dream is over…..

Remember when John Lennon sang that? No? Well then ask your grandfather. It was on his best album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.

That album came out right at the end of 1970 and was received like unwanted electro-shock therapy by most Beatles fans at the time. Lennon was right in the midst of primal scream therapy and it was a raw, punk-before-punk blast of bitter, hurting rock. The phrase ‘the dream is over’ comes near the end of the totally epic tune God, which is the one where Lennon rants on with a list of all the things he doesn’t believe in, a list that includes Hitler, Zimmerman, yoga, and the Beatles.

But I digress…..

Of course I’m referring to last night’s nightmare in the nation’s capital, a horror movie starring Habs-killer Daniel Alfredsson – who now has, according to Pat Hickey’s calculations (and who am I to question Pat’s math skills?) 30 goals and 74 assists in 86 games against the Canadiens – and way-too-yappy Ryan White, who is starting to remind me of that old Ramones chestnut, Loudmouth. Montreal lost 5-1 to the Sens and if you were on Twitter while it was happening – and for heaven’s sake, who wasn’t? – it was like a wave of depression hit our timelines, as La Presse film critic Marc-Andre Lussier mentioned (tweeted). ‘De la parade à la déprime en deux minutes. Ma TL est en maniaco-depression. #habs’

All of a sudden it felt like last year all over again. It’s funny because I had been conversing somewhere online earlier in the day that I kind of missed the punk fury of the Top Shelf blog from last season when Pierre ‘Chuckles’ Gauthier was running the club into the group in spectacularly psychotic fashion. ‘Anger is an energy’ as John Lydon once memorably put it. So with the goals flying past Budaj quicker than Scottish reporters fleeing from Pauline Marois, I for a moment thought I might be off the bandwagon and back lobbing verbal grenades at the Canadiens.

I had my headline – Return of P.K. Subban derails the Habs. The Subinator – Pernell to Lars ‘Underachiever’ Eller – was in the house, in the press gallery, not on the ice, but why not blame P.K. Most everyone – from his team-mates to the bitter ex-coaches on L’Antichambre – has been doing it since the first day he laced up for the Habs. So yeah it’s all P.K.’s fault.

By the way, not only are guys like Eller, Gorges and Markov giving Subban heck, but even coach Michel Therrien has jumped in, saying that P.K. will have to grasp the team’s “philosophy” before he hits the ice. Like which philosopher are you following this week Michel? Descartes? Thomas Aquinas? (That joke’s for you Daniel Weinstock!)

I mean give me a break. It’s time to stop treating Subban like crap. The guy has done nothing wrong. He ended up signing with the team under Marc Bergevin’s terms. So cut the kid some slack. End of rant.

To get back to last night’s game, I actually am not panicking. It’s just one game. My son Keane had the right attitude at breakfast (a rare thing indeed) – he said, what’s the Habs’  record? Well it’s 4-and-2 for 8 points and fifth in the east. This is good. Do you need to be reminded where we were in the standings last year?

As Dave Bronstetter said to me last night, they’re a young team, they’re gonna have nights like this and it kills me to say this, but Dave makes a good point here. Ryan White has to stop taking dumb penalties, though I have to chuckle at Therrien getting into a lather over White yapping to the ref given that Therrien’s yapping rather famously cost the Habs a playoff series way back when (ask your grandfather).

So this morning, here’s the philosopher I’m following. Me. My philosophy is you get back up, dust yourself off and get back out there and do whatever it is you have to do. In the Habs’ case, that’s starting to get ready for two afternoon games this weekend at the Bell Centre.

Uh-oh, the Habs hate afternoon games. Yikes…..maybe it is time to panic after all. 🙂

– Brendan

Here’s the Alfredsson goal:

And here’s God by John Lennon. Listen all the way through. ‘God is a concept by which we measure our pain.’ Now that’s some kind of a philosophy.