Georges Laraque fought 131 times in the NHL regular season across 695 games. Eleven of those were against the same man.
Matt Johnson met Laraque eleven times while playing for three different clubs, which is more meetings than Laraque had against 20 of the 30 franchises he faced. And all 12 of his fights against Minnesota, the team he fought most, came against just two opponents.
Below is the full record: penalty minutes and games against every team he played, with the fights compiled against them. Then there’s the part that reads oddly once you notice it: what happened when he lined up against his own former clubs.
Georges Laraque’s fights and penalty minutes against every NHL team
Penalty minutes and games by opponent split. The fight column is our own compilation from 12 season fight cards. Ranked by penalty minutes per game. Career rate: 1.62.
| Opponent | GP | PIM | PIM/GP | Fights |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Philadelphia Flyers | 20 | 77 | 3.85 | 6 |
| Calgary Flames | 42 | 120 | 2.86 | 7 |
| Winnipeg Jets | 16 | 40 | 2.50 | 4 |
| Minnesota Wild | 27 | 66 | 2.44 | 12 |
| Columbus Blue Jackets | 21 | 51 | 2.43 | 7 |
| Buffalo Sabres | 19 | 39 | 2.05 | 4 |
| Pittsburgh Penguins | 11 | 21 | 1.91 | 3 |
| Arizona Coyotes | 26 | 49 | 1.88 | 5 |
| Toronto Maple Leafs | 24 | 42 | 1.75 | 6 |
| New York Islanders | 20 | 33 | 1.65 | 5 |
| Chicago Blackhawks | 25 | 41 | 1.64 | 7 |
| Dallas Stars | 32 | 52 | 1.62 | 6 |
| Anaheim Ducks | 34 | 55 | 1.62 | 9 |
| Tampa Bay Lightning | 10 | 16 | 1.60 | 2 |
| Boston Bruins | 16 | 25 | 1.56 | 3 |
| Los Angeles Kings | 33 | 51 | 1.55 | 9 |
| New York Rangers | 19 | 29 | 1.53 | 5 |
| Colorado Avalanche | 40 | 60 | 1.50 | 6 |
| Washington Capitals | 15 | 22 | 1.47 | 4 |
| San Jose Sharks | 33 | 48 | 1.45 | 4 |
| Nashville Predators | 28 | 38 | 1.36 | 4 |
| St. Louis Blues | 28 | 34 | 1.21 | 4 |
| Florida Panthers | 11 | 11 | 1.00 | 1 |
| Vancouver Canucks | 40 | 36 | 0.90 | 2 |
| Carolina Hurricanes | 14 | 12 | 0.86 | 2 |
| Detroit Red Wings | 28 | 23 | 0.82 | 1 |
| Ottawa Senators | 22 | 16 | 0.73 | 2 |
| New Jersey Devils | 17 | 11 | 0.65 | 1 |
| Edmonton Oilers | 6 | 2 | 0.33 | 0 |
| Montreal Canadiens | 18 | 6 | 0.33 | 0 |
| Career | 695 | 1,126 | 1.62 | 131 |
Three rows need annotating, because the splits use each franchise’s present name rather than the one it carried at the time.
| Row | What it was during his career |
|---|---|
| Winnipeg Jets | the Atlanta Thrashers, who moved to Winnipeg in 2011. All four of those fights are printed by the fight register with Atlanta’s code, which is how we know the row is not the earlier Winnipeg franchise |
| Arizona Coyotes | the Phoenix Coyotes throughout. This is also the club Laraque himself played 56 games for in 2006-07, so the row covers the seasons he faced them from Edmonton, Pittsburgh and Montreal |
| Anaheim Ducks | the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim until 2006 |
There is no row for 2004-05 anywhere in his record because the lockout wiped out the season. He spent it with AIK in Sweden.
Which team did Laraque fight most?
Minnesota, 12 times, and the composition is remarkable.
| Opponent | Fights against Minnesota |
|---|---|
| Matt Johnson | 8 |
| Derek Boogaard | 4 |
That is the entire list. 12 fights, two names, across seven seasons. Johnson accounted for all eight between 2000 and 2004, Boogaard for all four between 2005 and 2006, and the handover is almost clean.
Behind Minnesota sit Anaheim and Los Angeles on nine, then Calgary, Columbus and Chicago on seven. Calgary is the heavier matchup by penalty minutes: 120 against the Flames in 42 games is the largest figure against any single opponent in his career, and more than any other row by 54 minutes.
READ MORE: Georges Laraque shares what he thought before every fight
Which opponents did Laraque fight most?
| Opponent | Fights | For which clubs |
|---|---|---|
| Matt Johnson | 11 | Minnesota eight times, Los Angeles twice, Atlanta once |
| Stu Grimson | 7 | Anaheim four times, Los Angeles twice, Nashville once |
| Jody Shelley | 6 | Columbus five times, San Jose once |
| Wade Belak | 5 | Toronto three times, Calgary once, Florida once |
| Donald Brashear | 4 | Washington three times, Vancouver once |
| Todd Fedoruk | 4 | Anaheim twice, Philadelphia once, Phoenix once |
| Derek Boogaard | 4 | Minnesota, all four |
Six of his seven most-fought opponents met him for more than one club. Johnson and Grimson each fought him for three different teams.
Two of the single-team concentrations are worth noting against the table above. Shelley accounts for five of the seven Columbus fights, and Brashear for three of the four against Washington. Those rows are not rivalries with cities. They are rivalries with individuals who happened to be employed there.
READ MORE: How to watch the Edmonton Oilers
How many times did Laraque fight Bob Probert?
Twice. 14 November 1999 with Probert in Chicago, and 21 December 2001, also in Chicago.
READ MORE: Bob Probert’s penalty minutes against every NHL team
Which team was he most penalized against?
Philadelphia, at 3.85 penalty minutes a game across 20 meetings, more than double his career rate of 1.62. Six fights against four different Flyers, three of them Riley Cote.
Calgary holds the raw total at 120 minutes, and Minnesota is third by rate at 2.44.
And then the bottom two rows. Laraque played 490 games for Edmonton and 61 for Montreal. Against Edmonton, he took two penalty minutes in six games. Against Montreal, six minutes in eighteen games. Both rates are 0.33, the two lowest in the table by a wide margin, and he never fought either club once.
The only two franchises he never dropped his gloves against in the regular season are the two whose sweaters he had worn.
READ MORE: How Georges Laraque spent his first big hockey paycheck
How many fights did he actually have?
No authoritative answer exists, and the published numbers disagree by nearly a factor of two.
| Figure | Source and what it counts |
|---|---|
| 131 | the fight register, NHL regular season only |
| 142 | the same register, adding nine preseason and two playoff fights |
| 159 | the same register again, adding seventeen junior fights in the QMJHL |
| “over 200 professional fights” | Laraque himself, writing in a hockey magazine in August 2021 |
| “more than 240” | a Pittsburgh outlet in August 2018 |
| “hundreds of times in the NHL” | Laraque himself, quoted about his face never needing stitches |
The NHL has never kept fight statistics. No official count exists for anybody’s fights. His player page on the register carries the first three figures, and the discrepancy between them is purely a question of what gets included.
This article uses 131 for the table, because that is the number whose season-by-season components we could check one row at a time, and all twelve matched. The penalty-minute column is a different kind of data: it comes from the league’s own game records, and the thirty rows sum exactly to his career 695 games and 1,126 minutes.
Why did Laraque stop playing?
Montreal released him on 21 January 2010 and bought out the remainder of his contract on 15 June. He announced his retirement on 2 August 2010, having played through two herniated discs in his back for the final season and a half.
He arrived in Montreal via a mid-season trade three years earlier. Pittsburgh acquired him from Phoenix on 27 February 2007, and CBS News reported that day that the Penguins “got Laraque from Phoenix for forward prospect Daniel Carcillo and a low-round draft pick”, on an afternoon when they also added Gary Roberts.
Read more:
