First, for those of you who aren’t big hockey fans (e.g. Un-Canadian traitors) let’s try to explain the essence of Georges Laraque using a single video:

Why must we resort to fighting? Can't we just... dance our differences away?

Georges Laraque is a man born with such God-given badassery that he says “Good luck, man” before casually deciding to enter into a bare-knuckle face-punching contest with a loose acquaintance.

He’s also a vegan who, in semi-retirement, is putting his heft behind the Green Party.

BGL will probably be using his star power in Quebec, where he’s still enough of a big name to star in softcore porn-influenced commercials for alcoholic high-caffeine heart-attacks-in-a-can (here’s the link, in case you enjoy watching videos of sweaty French girls in bikinis play ball hockey, but are afraid to enter those terms into Google on the same computer your girlfriend uses.) Laraque has recently been associated with a shabby, disreputable gang of thugs operating out of Montreal calling themselves the Canadiens, but luckily he’s severed ties with this gang of lowly, widely-reviled trash. (Save the snarky comment, you’ve got nothing on me – my Leafs suck, and at least I know it.) He’ll now be focusing his talents (face-punching, etc.) towards a loosely-associated group of environment-nuts, rebellious teenagers and social Conservatives called the Green Party. It’s debatable whether Conservative Westerners should hold more contempt for him as a Montreal Canadien, as a Green Party spokesman, or as a black guy.

Now, let’s untangle the political connotations. Laraque’s a hockey goon, which is something of an anachronism in the field of modern sports: a man whose entire job is to commit common assault in exchange for millions of dollars, something akin to a mafia hit-man. The hockey goon appeals to the kind of knuckle-dragging, dart-hacking, beef-jerky-chewin’ good ol’ boy whose entire wardrobe consists of t-shirts they’ve gotten from 24-packs of Labatt Blue. And then you’ve got the Green Party, who love animals, the environment, and general topics that our aforementioned good ol’ boy would consider “some kinda queer stuff.” All of this, including a possible run for office by Georges in the future, will be playing itself out in Quebec – an already politically confused climate where the Bloc fights for the good-ol’-habitant vote, pockets of Grits and Tories aim for the masses, the NDP awkwardly fits itself into the fray, and the Greens have a motley crew of lefties and righties telling people to try vegan poutine.

OVERALL CONSEQUENCES: Nothing. You’ll never hear from this story again, Georges probably won’t run for office, but for 15 minutes during a prorogued parliament it was fun for political beat-writers to crank out articles about how a tough hockey guy was joining a bunch of wimpy hippies. Oh, the humourous juxtaposition!

[Source: G&M]