Scott Gomez and the Terrible No Good Very Bad Season

News came out of Montreal late Tuesday that Canadien center (or “centre” if you’re Canadian) Scott Gomez and assistant coach Randy Ladoucer had been in a shouting match. Much odder and slightly older news came out of Uniondale (that’s in Long Island) earlier, last Thursday, when Gomez scored his first goal in more than a calendar year.

Brushing aside the fact that Gomez is an absolutely outstanding name to see on the back of a hockey jersey, the goal drought was not listed in the reporting as cause for the near-fisticuffs, though someone not immediately familiar with all this would find that surprising. There’s certainly reason to connect the two: The Canadiens have struggled worse than usual—they’re waaayyy out of a playoff spot, and in a mini-scandal that makes sense if you’re from Quebec, the GM publicly apologized for hiring an Anglophone coach—and Gomez has been their consistently least productive and most expensive player, and in the middle was his perceived lack of effort.

Gomez, who is 32 and from Alaska, was debatably elite at his peak, which was forever ago, and netted about a point a game on a New Jersey team with scant offense, which is kind of like being a metal guitarist in an oi band. In 2007, he signed a $50-million-plus contract with the Rangers, and, like some folks who have $50 million coming to them, began declining. Such long and large deals are never fail-safe—and hockey’s contract structures are notoriously weird—but this one seemed bad right away. When he arrived in Montreal, he was greeted by mixture of fear, apprehension and straight befuddlement. Canadien fans, who are smarter than most hockey fans, soon found there was good reason for them to worry: After one good season in the land of high taxes and enforced language laws, his wheels fell off. Gomez was on the short list for the worst player on the team and took up residence on the bench.

Gomez hadn’t scored since the day before the Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl, and it came on a tip-in, which is to a goal what a donut hole is to a donut. It’s hard to score in the NHL—doing anything against professionals is incredibly hard—and though Gomez had other skills, they all seemed to hide during the goal drought. His $7-million-plus yearly salary—only one other player in Canada makes more—made him look even worse, and nearly justified the internet meme he became.

Safely in the rear-view mirror, Gomez's Promethian run of sustained ineptitude looks almost impressive now, a mix of Joe Dimaggio’s record hit streak and Menachem Begin’s eight straight election defeats. Between February 5, 2011 and February 9, 2012, Gomez took over 120 shots without a goal, a measure of repeated failure that barely even happens in baseball--it'd be equivalent to going hitless every day for a month. Persevering through that stretch of stench is, at the very least, something.

Shouting matches like Tuesday’s often get a player traded, though Gomez’s contract is so horrendous, he’d be better off applying for citizenship. The contract makes it tough to relate: His bad year at work has been worse than any of mine, but he’s earned enough for a house, college education, and a bag of dope since October, and he's been in the league since 2000.

It’s not a bad life, but it’s hard to think of an immediate precedent for what Gomez had gone though: To be thoroughly terrible at your job for so long and so publicly, and to keep showing up, to keep trying, to finally get it, to still stink and then get it even worse. Baseball is crueler, and basketball, with its shorts and running, leaves players exposed, but few athletes have had a worse time than Gomez has the past 12 months.

@samreiss_