Claude Lemieux: 1965-2026

Tuesday 6/2/26

Claude Lemieux died the other day. He took his own life just a few days after making an appearance at the Bell Centre before the Canadiens-Hurricanes game. He was only sixty-years-old. Horrible news, obviously. I don't think it's right that when there is news like this about a former athlete, people immediately chalk it up to CTE, especially if that former athlete played football or hockey.

The truth is that save in the rarest cases, we don't know what is going on with someone. We often don't know what's going on with people we know best, who are the most proximate to our own lives. We may not know what's really going on with people with whom we live. I think about my own life and how I was married to someone and I really didn't have any idea what was happening with them. Or perhaps who they were at all.

This seems dismissive and disrespectful to me, simply saying, "Oh, CTE." It can always be something else with life, and something other than what we think or might ever think. Such is life. Such is pain. Such is the frailty of our condition oftentimes. Such is the futility, unfortunately, even of strength often enough. Our strength gives out.

Who knows. I don't know. I just know that it's awful news. The kind of news that hits you in the face in your own life like cold water.

Lemieux was a hell of a hockey player when it counted most. He was unpopular during his career, the kind of player hated by all fan bases save that of the team he was scoring big goals for. Those big goals came in the playoffs. He had some nice regular seasons, reaching the 30-goal mark five times, with a career-high of 41, but Lemieux got better when it mattered most.

He led the NHL in playoffs goals twice, and not a lot of guys can say that, winning a Conn Smythe along the way. He wasn't an enforcer, but nor was he a pest in the Ken Linseman sense. Too big to be a pest in that classic regard.

The best comp for him requires us to venture outside of the hockey world. Lemieux was a lot like the Pistons' Bill Laimbeer. That sort of agitator, but with skill--specifically, touch. Lemieux had great hands. He was kind of worm-y (or turtle-y, I suppose), would bait you, didn't really stand eyeball to eyeball with you and fight. Head games. He wasn't the most honorable player. Knew where the line was, and, yes, he'd cross it.

He wasn't a tough guy in the normal regard, but the way he scored his goals required toughness. They came from being down low in the slot, taking punishment from defensemen in a time when the latter could do what they wished to you with their sticks once you entered a certain space. If you were going to score like Tim Kerr did, and Dino Ciccarelli, and, to some extent, Mike Bossy, you (and your back), were going to pay a real physical price.

Lemieux wasn't a Hall of Fame type of player, but he was very good, and he could be the difference between your team winning a Cup or not. He won four Cups in total with three different organizations. Some players are winners. They're the guys who, to put it in football terms, always seem to "make a play."

That was Lemieux. His career looked to be over after age thirty-seven season of 2002-23 season, but he came back for 18 games with the Sharks in 2008-09, which was highly unusual. You don't ever see this kind of thing. Not at age forty-three after so many years away. He even suited up in the playoffs for San Jose.

This can be indicative of other things. Or not. I think a person who is content in their life is less likely to feel a need to try and go back. Then again, a person might also wish to prove something to themselves, or challenge themselves, and they have a support system in place, and people who support and abet this endeavor, and they go for it. But when I see it, I am given some pause.

I say that we rarely know what's going on with people, but it could be that we know less than we ever have, despite social media, phones, the various manners in which we can broadcast anything. Look at Threads. You'll hardly see a solid, intelligent thought. But what you'll see are random asides, that which flashes through a brain. "I want this for dinner." "Watching this." "Want to go home."

Everyone wants to be heard, but few are saying anything. Few have anything to say. Few have the language and thinking skills that would enable them to say it.

Such is the price of our society. Living this way. The screens, the short attention spans which we are the authors of, the unwillingness to read, the inability of just about anyone to produce things worth reading, the AI. We die inside as humans. Each day we die some more. Think of the piece of fruit that has nothing left inside of it. The orange is all dried up. And yet, it looks like an orange. There it is with other oranges for sale at the vendor's.

This has become the sum, oftentimes, of what we share, and it has fast become the sum of us. But there are still human components in there. For now. And it's these human parts that we usually keep under the tightest wraps. A person can have a Substack that's ostensibly about their lives, and say nothing true and real about themselves in many years.

This record is, of course, unique. One does know. One knows that what is relayed is real. One knows the person, insofar as a person who is this person can be known.

We can feel like that which we need is close at hand, and yet might as well be a galaxy away. That's how it goes when appearance is made to supersede reality at the sociological level. We get caught up in that larger current. It's hard to swim our way out of it and then get others to come along with us, even if that means, in this case, of hearing, seeing, and understanding what we're going through, where we're at. Often while they remain in that larger current themselves. It's an act of "Hey, you, please look and see me for what I really am, here what I'm saying as what it really is," which, at the same time, makes us stand out from everyone else.

This becomes harder still because society has devolved into an attention contest. It doesn't matter what you get attention for, just that you get it. By hook or by crook. The method is usually through falsehoods and inanities. Things that aren't real. We think, "Why should I be real when I don't have to be? Why put myself out there like that?"

The actual cost, though, is a good life well lived, and a better world worth living in.

When we stand alone, we make for a bigger target, especially in this vapid, digitized, broken version of the world. And even if there isn't anyone who'd want to take their shots at us, we'll commonly feel that the snipers are out there, gathered en masse, and that's enough for us to keep going as we've been going, until, sadly, we go under.

I think most people are doing a version of this. How do you break the pattern? How do you find people? Support? In a world where so little is seen and heard as what it is, for what it is, how do you get seen and heard as what you are? And for what you're going through or dealing with?

All I can say regarding Claude Lemieux is that you never want to learn news like this. It's awful all around.