DAVID DENOMA
There are many pointy-headed folk with lots of letters after their names who have posited alternative theories about the way time works, and not a few of the tinfoil-hat crowd as well.
Our point is not to conduct a survey of said theories, the plausibility of which ranges from neat-but-not-bloody-likely to seek-psychiatric-assistance-immediately.
Oh no.
Rather, this morning's ruminations seek to stride a few lengths of the rink in another man's goalie skates - in this case one who surely experiences the old sands slipping through the hourglass differently than you or I.
For this is how Carey Price's life must feel: no yesterdays, no tomorrows, just one long today.
Up, down, sideways, wins, cheers, boos, all-star nods, losses, benchings - a single, drawn-out, blurry image.
Take the last week. Play well in Toronto? Yeah, they huff, but not well enough to win. Play brilliantly in Pittsburgh and steal a game? Yeah, they snort, but if the 2-1 softie had stood and the other guy hadn't given up a worse softie....
For an illustration of what we mean, look to our great and good pal Frankie Gagnon in this morning's La Presse. For non-French speakers, the headline reads: Psychodrama Avoided.
Now, it's a fact that the Habs haven't started a season 0-2 since the dark days of the GM Réjean Houle era, but aren't people getting a little carried away?
We know, the pundits, who blow all the oxygen into the Habs hype balloon (yeah, yeah we're guilty too, m'lud), have breathlessly gone on about the CAPITAL importance of a strong start by Price and the Habs.
But isn't 1-1 something short of a catastrophe? Or has the coffee urn been laced with something from the office supply of crazy pills?
Shouldn't sports fans in Quebec be more concerned with the exploits of co-CFL leaders the Alouettes and Ben Cahoon, the little guy from Utah who could?
How about the Impact, who have not stormed into the playoffs and brilliantly resurrected their season. What about formerly slothful centre-half Ali Gerba, who has scored roughly 1,487 goals in the couple of months since Impact owner Joey Saputo publicly called him out for being plump and lazy?
When's the last time an NHL owner or coach did that? Not named Todd Richards, we mean - and Guillaume Latendresse isn't out of shape, he's just big-boned, as all Habs watchers know.
Yet, as ever, the public narrative in Montreal is about one subject, and one subject only. Everyone's a-twist over how Price will handle Wednesday's home opener against the Tampa Bay Bolts and their cadre of Francophone snipers and coaches.
And all this for GAME THREE OF 82!
Okay, okay, the NHL has had the whole compressed-time thing going on since the advent of the salary cap, and it seems the playoff race now starts in the summer - TSN should start calculating magic numbers for bubble teams in training camp.
It would be a tasty enough encounter, given the looting and pillaging Stevie Y has been doing at the Bell Centre in recent months, without the permanent iso-cam on Price and the daily tracker of Jaro Halak stats - hey, he stopped 13 whole shots against the Ducks, give him the Vezina!
To beat the hackneyed and quite derivative time-warp meme to death, Price must feel like someone bundled him into a Delorean that's tricked out with and zoomed him back to the beginning of last year.
You'll recall he played brilliantly out of the gate, swiping the first two games. Oh yeah, then the bottom fell out.
And not to put a hex on the young man from B.C., but the Habs often suck at home against the Lightning - they're 1-2-1 in the last two years.
To say the visitors will be highly motivated is an understatement, and Guy Boucher is one of the smarter people to ever step behind an NHL bench.
But this isn't the last week of the season, and no playoff spot will be decided in light of the result (and our nose says take a punt on the Lightning, not sure that D can corral young Stamkos or Lecavalier, Gagné or St. Louis).
Logic, however, is irrelevant to this discussion.
Otherwise people would be talking about how suckalicious Scott Gomez has been to start the season, or how the Habs power-play is a shell of its former self, or about the pleasant surprises that are Dustin Boyd and Jeff Halpern.
The official FI position on Price is that he's the right choice for this team, and a seriously talented goalie, but it's getting harder to argue that he wouldn't be better off somewhere else.
Especially if the ironic cheers rain down tomorrow, as they surely will if he lets one in that has even a soupçon of softie about it.
His margin is down to nil. It has been for the better part of 18 months that seem like one long, exhausting day.