Canadiens say au revoir to Georges Laraque.

Per TSN.ca (and, technically, per Kukla's Korner's retweet of Darren Dreger's tweet, including a link to the article), I present you the following:

Georges Laraque will not play another game with the Montreal Canadiens.

General manager Bob Gainey contacted him Thursday morning and told him that head coach Jacques Martin didn't had any confidence in him anymore and the team believes they can win without the enforcer in the lineup. The club does not intend to play him for the rest of the season and will buy him out at the end of the 2009-10 campaign.

In light of the recent events in Haiti, where Laraque's parents were born, he had the following to say about the timing of his firing:

"Classless," Laraque said angrily. "To do this in the midst of all I'm dealing with in Haiti, the timing is awful. I'm not going to sugar coat anything."

I don't know about all that. Obviously, the recent events in Haiti are horrendous; you'd have to be an absolutely soulless person not to feel a heavy sense of sadness about the aftermath of last week's earthquake.

But, really? Georges Laraque--notably a dirty player with a big mouth, which he completely owns up to having--wants a pass on getting fired for not doing his job for the past two years because of personal turmoil?

That's not the way it works. Laraque of all people should know this. One of the readers of the TSN article commented the following:

Honestly who pulls the Haiti card? The players always say they make business decisions. Does that mean when Gainey's daughter passed away on the boat that not one player should have been planning a new long term deal out of respect.

Agreed. You could make a similar argument for Jose Theodore, whose infant son died over the summer; meanwhile, this year, he's been wrangling with not only Semyeon Varlamov, but also Michal Neuvirth, for the prime goaltending spot in Washington.

Tragedy happens. It's a part of life. In Laraque's case, he hadn't been able to perform his job--the brute enforcer--with consistency, due to his long-suffering back problems and just general suckage, which occurred long before the catastrophe in Haiti.

If I can't perform the specific duties of my job, I highly doubt I'd be able to hold on to it by insisting to my employer that I had had something horrible happen to me personally, well after I had ceased excelling at my daily tasks.

Now, because I can't resist digging in a little bit on this one, I'll leave you with one of my favorite cliches: What goes around comes around. (My super-country aunt particularly enjoys using this adage on the daily.) To me, Laraque is one of the dirtiest douchebags in the League, and while I'm not really a spiritual person, I do believe that karmic retribution comes to all who deserve it, for better or for worse. Perhaps he would have had greater job security if he had made a career out of something other than headhunting (or kneehunting, for that matter).

For TSO's part, though, I did decide to take it easy on Laraque; for example, I did have "AHAHAHAHAHA" in the title, but I thought that might be taking it a little far.