Longtime NHL tough guy Georges Laraque was an intimidating presence to opponents –and in this 2002 story from The Hockey News' Archive, Laraque pulled back the curtain.
Former NHL enforcer Georges Laraque has made many fans in his 12 years in hockey’s top league and beyond. And in this cover story from The Hockey News’ Sept. 13, 2002 edition – Vol. 56, Issue 2 – from then-contributing editor Mark Brender, Laraque gave the world great insight into who he was as a professional player and a human being at the time.
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At the time the story was published, Laraque was in his sixth season with the Edmonton Oilers, and he told Brender that his job – protecting his fellow Oilers and not being a defensive liability on the ice – gave him tremendous satisfaction. While he knew some people wouldn’t understand his position in the sport, he had no qualms about stepping up to opponents and letting them know they couldn’t take liberties with his teammates.
“I know a lot of people think I’m nuts doing it, but what else am I going to do?” Laraque told Brender. “You have, like, 10 years in a career where you can be in a position to make everyone happy, why not? I want to do it. I have to do it. That’s the only way I feel good about myself. I don’t want people to know me only as a tough guy.”
Now 47 years old, Laraque remains one of the friendliest people in the game. That said, the Montreal native drew a firm line for NHL players not to cross. And he understanding toward players who did.
“How can you respect guys that jump guys?” Laraque said. “How can you respect guys that fight guys at the end of their shift? Cause there’s a lot of guys who make their reputation like this…I believe that every guy I’ve fought against, they could never say something like this (about me). I don’t want any edge. I always want it to be clean.
“And I believe that when a guy is down, you never touch him. When a guy has no defense and he tries to cover his face, why continue punching? And when the referee comes in, the fight is over. There are some guys that are tougher when the referee comes in than when he isn’t. There’s some guys, they’re starting to get beat up, and when the referee comes in, now they want to kill you.”
UNDERSTANDING GEORGES
Vol. 56, No. 2, Sept. 13, 2002
By Mark Brender
We know what you’re thinking.
Like, hey Einstein, what’s to know? When I see the Edmonton Oilers play, my eyes don’t lie. The guy‘s bigger than a boxcar, tougher than a mouthful of metal, the baddest, meanest, heaviest hombre on skates.
Well, yes, he may be all that. But if that’s all you know, you don’t know Georges Laraque and that’s not a good place to be. That would mean Georges has an image problem. Georges doesn’t want an image problem. You are now responsible for Georges having an image problem.
So here’s what you can do. Move to Edmonton. On the occasion of your child’s birthday, have him or her write Georges a letter. Or send Georges an e-mail. Georges has his own website: www.georgeslaraque.com. He loves his computer. Have your kid tell Georges he wants him to come to the party. Make sure to include your address and the time the party starts. Georges wouldn’t want to be late.
If you want your party to stand out in his mind, make it unique. Bring in a clown on a camel. If your son plays Playstation with Georges and takes the Oilers and pretends he’s Georges, the real Georges will love that, too. Anything to add some variety.
“I do so many,” he says, “they’re basically all the same.”
Don’t bother asking him to take your daughter to the big high school dance, though. He did it last season and once was enough. A man has his limits.
“That was the biggest and craziest thing I’ve ever done and I can’t do that ever again because it was pretty demanding,” Laraque says. “That took all day.’
Limos, flowers, the whole bit, and he even traveled an hour or so outside Edmonton to get to the high school gym.
So the next time you see Georges duking it out with arch-rival Donald Brashear or Sandy McCarthy or some other slugger, remember, you could just as easily be getting to know a grinning, goofy 25-year-old over a friendly game of pin-the-tail-on-the donkey. Remember, he may be the NHL’s reigning heavyweight champion, but he doesn’t want an image problem.
He fights because he’s good at it and he likes it and it’s his job. He does the other stuff for the same reasons.
“I know a lot of people think I’m nuts doing it, but what else am I going to do?” he says. “You have, like, 10 years in a career where you can be in a position to make everyone happy, why not? I want to do it. I have to do it. That’s the only way I feel good about myself. I don’t want people to know me only as a tough guy.”
Birthdays, anniversaries, backyard barbeques – it’s not as if Georges is the only player to get these requests. What sets him apart is the lengths he will go to honor them.
“I’ve never heard of it,” says Oilers coach Craig MacTavish. “This is uncharted territory.”
Georges Laraque grew up outside Montreal, where the only person who wanted to see a black boy playing hockey was the boy himself. The white parents in the stands made that clear. They started with “n-----” and never finished. Georges’ parents didn’t want him to play, either. They thought it was a terrible environment for a child to have to grow up in. When they refused to come to the rink any more, driven away by the taunts, Georges would ride his bicycle, hockey bag slung over his shoulder. When the snow got too deep he took the bus.
“Everybody was always telling me you’ll never make it to the NHL, it’s a white man’s sport and you’ll never do it,” he says. “As much as I liked football and soccer more, the reason I stuck with hockey was because I wanted to prove everybody wrong. Maybe that’s why I’m a tough guy, because I’ve been fighting all my life.”
The 6-foot-3 and 245- to 265-pound profile (during the season) might also have something to do with it. To get his off-season weight range, add 20 pounds. Laraque maxed out this summer at 270 (versus 285 a year ago) and is entering camp at 245. “The last time I was 245 was six years ago,” he says.
Laraque’s past made him more than just a fighter. It made him a principled fighter. He pays as much attention to “the code” as any bug-eyed computer programmer. In his world, the code has been passed down from generation to generation, each one giving opportunity to the next. It is a world in which showing up matters more than winning, in which showing up your opponent is a crime against the profession.
Rule 1: Don’t turn down a fight (unless the coach has specifically asked you not to drop ‘em).
“When I came into this league, I went up to guys to make my name,” he says. “And if those guys would have refused to fight me, I wouldn’t have a reputation. And now the new up-and-comers, like Jody Shelley, a new guy in Columbus, he asked me twice…it’s my job to do what Tony Twist, what Bob Probert, what Stu Grimson did to me, agree to fight me so I could build my reputation.”
Rule 2: Know the situation, know your opponent. “If a guy is sick, or he’s tired or whatever reason it is, and you fight him and that guy doesn’t want to, and you beat him, does he respect you? Or is he going to respect you when you fight him and he was ready for it?
Rule 3: Fight fair.
“How can you respect guys that jump guys? How can you respect guys that fight guys at the end of their shift? Cause there’s a lot of guys who make their reputation like this…I believe that every guy I’ve fought against, they could never say something like this (about me). I don’t want any edge. I always want it to be clean. And I believe that when a guy is down, you never touch him. When a guy has no defense and he tries to cover his face, why continue punching? And when the referee comes in, the fight is over. There are some guys that are tougher when the referee comes in than when he isn’t. There’s some guys, they’re starting to get beat up, and when the referee comes in, now they want to kill you.”
It might be wise to add one other rule, although this one isn’t of Georges’ making. Call it the preservation rule: If you’re in a fight, don’t beat Georges.
“You’re just better off persevering through a marginal defeat than you are anything else,” MacTavish says. “Otherwise he’s going to want to do it again.”
But Georges wants to be known as more than just a fighter. He wants to be a player.
Entering his fourth full season, he has already taken huge strides. Last season, Detroit associate coach Dave Lewis called him the most dominant big man in the NHL. In one game against Nashville he played 17 minutes-seven more than his season average.
The Oilers want him to seize a regular spot as the third line right winger. When he is skating and playing with a physical nastiness, he can be an electrifying force. Nobody can move him from the front of the net.
Nobody can knock him off the puck in the corner. The Oilers like to joke he has the highest puck-possession-to-goals-scored ratio in the league.
Laraque enters this season determined to become a 20-20 tough guy, as in 20 goals and 20 assists, plus however many fights his team needs from him. Two years ago he had 13 goals and 29 points, both career highs, plus 148 penalty minutes. He slipped to five goals and 19 points in 2001-02, with 157 PIM, but his points target remains the same. He believes as long as he sets his goals high, complacency will be kept at bay.
For MacTavish and GM Kevin Lowe, there are a couple keys to him earning more ice time. The first one is his weight. The Oilers feel he gets sluggish when his weight is too high; MacTavish imposed a 255-pound limit last winter and sent Laraque home one day for being a pound over.
“He has to be able to have the speed, and he does have it, to get in and make those checks as long as he can keep the weight off,” MacTavish said. “He was doing that more at the end of last year.”
Given Laraque’s current frame and frame of mind, this won’t be a problem. “I will, not hopefully, I will get more ice time this year because I’m going to make sure I earn it.”
Now here’s where things get tricky. The Oilers love what Georges does for the organization. Lowe would much rather have someone like Georges than someone who does nothing. But he’s just so…busy.
In addition to the birthday parties and the like, he’s involved with more charities than even he can remember. This is a man who last season mailed out 5,000 pictures to fans, placed gently into 8-by-10 envelopes with the same hands that bruise cheekbones in his day job.
The Oilers believe if he toned things down, just a bit, maybe he’d be even more of a menacing, larger-than-life presence come game time.
“Maybe we’ve got to burn him out, more on the ice and then he’ll be less likely to stop at a kid’s place for milk and cookies,” Lowe jokes.
But the kid, Kevin. Think of the kid.
“Hockey is great, yeah, making it to the NHL and stuff, but what’s great about being in the NHL is being able to have an impact on people’s lives,” Georges says. “Think about it, all I am is a hockey player, but having the power to make a child smile, is there anything better than that?”
You hear that one a thousand times a season. If you understand Georges, you know he means it.
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