Georges Laraque

Georges Laraque's fight record and what can actually be counted

There is no official NHL fight record. The league tracks fighting majors, which are penalties, and every fight total quoted for Laraque comes from fan-compiled databases maintained by volunteers who log bouts from video. Those tallies are useful for finding a date or an opponent and unreliable as statistics, because they disagree with each other and have no governing body behind them.

What is on the record is 1,126 penalty minutes in 695 games, a Hockey News Best Fighter award in 2003, and a Sports Illustrated ranking that placed Laraque first among NHL enforcers in 2008.

Did Georges Laraque ever lose a fight?

Yes, and Laraque has never claimed otherwise. The idea that he went undefeated comes from fan voting on individual bouts rather than from any record, and fan polls are opinion. Laraque himself has been open about being beaten, including a bad loss in junior hockey that he has described in detail, and he has named the opponent he found hardest to handle.

Our coverage includes the junior-level beating Laraque talks about openly and his answer on the toughest player he ever fought.

The Edmonton years and the 2006 Stanley Cup Final

Edmonton drafted Laraque 31st overall in 1995 and he spent nine NHL seasons there, long enough to become a crowd favourite for the Laraque Leap, the habit of throwing himself against the glass after an Oilers goal. His last Edmonton season ended in the 2006 Stanley Cup Final, where the Oilers took Carolina to a seventh game and lost it.

Laraque left for Phoenix that summer, moved on to Pittsburgh and then Montreal, and retired in 2010 after Montreal bought out his contract on 15 June, having played his last season and a half with two herniated discs in his back.

Why did Georges Laraque become a vegan?

Laraque went vegan in 2009, while still playing in the NHL, as a protest against the treatment of animals in the meat industry. He has said the decision came from animal welfare rather than from training or diet fashion, and he kept it through the end of his playing career, which made him an outlier in a sport built around conventional high-protein nutrition.

He turned it into business as well, investing in the raw vegan Crudessence restaurants in Montreal and in the kombucha brand Rise, and he has stayed a public voice on animal rights since.

Georges Laraque's role in the Green Party of Canada

Laraque was named a deputy leader of the Green Party of Canada on 31 July 2010, months after retiring from hockey, and he held the position until 17 October 2013. The role followed the environmental and animal welfare work he had already been doing, and it was an appointed party position rather than an elected office.

It is a fact about what Laraque did after hockey, and that is where this page leaves it. Party platforms and his own positions are outside what a hockey reference page is for.

Georges Laraque's Haitian background

Laraque was born in Montreal on 7 December 1976 to parents who had both been born in Haiti and emigrated to Canada. He came up through the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and won the Memorial Cup with the Granby Prédateurs in 1996, then spent his NHL career as one of very few Black enforcers in a league that had few Black players during his career.

Laraque stayed in Montreal after retiring, and his profile in Quebec, both as a player and afterwards, has been higher than his point totals would suggest.

What Georges Laraque has done since retiring

Laraque built a second career in Quebec media, hosting a radio show on BPM Sports in Montreal and commenting on the NHL and on fighting in particular. He has also been involved in business, from vegan restaurants and the Rise kombucha brand to a health and fitness venture he co-founded in 2016.

He has stayed close to the enforcer debate too, and we have covered what he said to an opponent while mic'd up before a fight and what went through his head beforehand.