Welcome home, Georges – and never say never

Donning flannel sacré not Laraque's cup of tea
'Hailed as franchise saviour one minute and not worth a pail of pucks the next'

Published Tuesday, August 19, 2003

DAVE STUBBS
The Gazette

It's likely you'll never see Georges Laraque in a Canadiens sweater, a curious case of a reporter willingly running himself out of town.

Last March, not long after the NHL trading deadline, the Edmonton Oilers forward wrote a column for the Internet site of RDS headlined: "Why I don't want to play in Montreal."

To paraphrase, Laraque wrote of the suffocating media-generated pressure that Canadiens players face in this city, of being hailed as a franchise saviour one minute and being not worth a pail of pucks the next; about how so many players enjoy fulfilling, productive careers only when they've been shipped out of Montreal.

The 26-year-old knew he would hit a nerve, but surely he didn't know it would be like drilling into an unfrozen molar. One thousand e-mails in a week suggested otherwise.

"That's what I thought, and to be honest, I didn't care what the reaction would be," said Laraque, in town this week to play in the Canadian ball-hockey championship for, coincidentally, a Montreal club.

"Because of what we make as professionals, we expect criticism. But there's a limit."

The fluently bilingual Montrealer played minor hockey in and around the city, then major junior in St. Jean, Laval, Granby and St. Hyacinthe.

A huge, rugged forward presence growing into his 6-foot-3, 245-pound frame, he exhaled a sigh of relief at the NHL entry draft in 1995, when he was chosen in the second round (31st overall) by the Edmonton Oilers. He has adopted that city as his home, and he's invested in it substantial time, energy, good will and cash.

Laraque saw nothing terribly appealing in '95, or now, about playing hockey in Montreal.

"I told people then that I wouldn't like to play here," he said. "If the Canadiens had gotten me, I would have come, not like Eric Lindros (who a decade ago thumbed his nose at the Quebec Nordiques).

"But I wouldn't lie like most Quebecers when they're drafted and say: 'It was my dream as a kid to be drafted by the Canadiens.' When you're a junior drafted here, you know that most of the time you'll have to spend six or seven years in the minors, and you know all the stuff you'll have to deal with.

"People were all over me just for saying that, but I've had players on the Canadiens shake my hand and thank me for it, guys who can't say anything because they play here."

Laraque's column touched off a firestorm of controversy in this province, filling the French papers and open-line airwaves with those accusing him of blaspheming the flannel sacre.

"If I had said I'd have loved to come to Montreal, I'm sure the media would have pushed to make it happen," he said. "I was their best friend: 'He's such a good player, the Canadiens need someone like him,' they said.

"But after (the column appeared), they all ripped me: 'He can't take the challenge, we don't need a crybaby.'

"Now I'll never get traded here, and that's what I wanted. It shows you how big a soap opera they make hockey. There are other things in life, but every time you read the French papers, there's a big drama about the Canadiens. I think that, after a while, this city gets fed up with one controversy after another."