Thursday, October 29, 2009 1:28 PM
Some fun with numbers
Sean Gordon
It's a quiet day here at French Immersion HQ, we're at loose ends given there's no need to race out to Brossard, panting, to catch the last 90 seconds of Habs practice.
So our restless employees got to noodling with their spiffy company-issued solar calculators (they can buy their own damn pencil cases, though), and like the man says, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Their limited math skills came up with some fun observations, which may or may not hold up under careful scrutiny by someone who actually made it further than Grade 10 algebra.
We digress.
It occurs to us that we haven't seen Georges Laraque, the friend of the working man, in a while; he's apparently been undergoing therapy for an undisclosed owie and presumably pumping iron, working the speed bag and looking menacingly at photos of the NHL's hardest hard men.
But he should be ready to roar when the time comes, having played exactly 2:12 in the last 13 days (and 0:00 in the last nine).
Some quick crunching of numbers reveals that Comrade Georges has cost vos Canadiens de Montreal $3,817 for every minute that he's played this year (the figure is a tick or two under 57 for those of you who have no lives and care about such details).
Which is a bargoon considering his key role, thankless job, etc. and so forth. And it's a whole $300 per minute less than what Scott Gomez, who has the team's biggest pay packet, pulls in for his daily 20-minute shift.
It would be churlish and uncalled for to point out that Georges makes more on a per-minute basis than leading scorer Mike Cammalleri ($3,784), or that he's trousered more money this season than 12 of his teammates. So we won't do that.
We say sign him to an extension; $1.5-million per annum is clearly an insult to his vast talents.
Earlier this week, the incomparable Michael Farber of Sports Illustraded asked Jacques Martin whether he would use the term doghouse to describe his approach to an out-of-favour player.
That drew a rueful smile and a flood of Martin-speak about how no, he prefers to frame it in eduactional terms, or some such bafflegab.
We'll say what he's too politic to spell out: Georges, who is minus-4 on the season, isn't in the coach's doghouse so much as he's out in a pasture behind the doghouse (and what with Andrei Kostitsyn taking up permanent residence, there's no room at the inn).
Here are some other numbers, selectively compiled and taken out of context.
How about .876 and 3.66, which are the courageous and plucky Jaro Halak's save percentage and goals-against in his past three starts (two of which his teammates still managed to win).
We know the Penguinos are an unfair yardstick (they're not Stanley Cup champs for nothing, kiddies) but does anyone still really think he has the chops to be a full-time number one for this team?
Jaro works hard and is a good character guy, but if people scream for blood over Carey's admittedly gruesome numbers, they should do the same when Jaro's are even worse - which they have been over the last week.
Our guy Carey - and yes, we admit we're in the tank for him, we like stupendously talented athletes with interesting back-stories, so sue us - will likely be back in the net against Chicago tomorrow.
We'll be curious to see if his stretch on the sidelines spurs him to grab hold of the number one job.
