Georges had a tough time finding dance partners at the beginning of the season but the rough stuff picked up and Georges ended up tied for 8th in the league in the fighting major department with 15.  Georges dismantled tough guys such as Dave Morissette, Mark Janssens, Chris Dingman and former teammate Dennis Bonvie, all of whom were left bloody.  He had a couple more goes with big Stu Grimson, but neither were as good as their fights from last year.  Georges edged out victories over Eric Cairns, Steve McKenna in their first fight, Chris Dingman in their second fight and big rookie Kyle Freadrich.  Laraque had a major feud going with Donald Brashear in the papers, but all that came of it was a roughing minor and a typical Donald Brashear hug fight.  A lot of guys were content on just tying up Georges this season.  Guys like Darren Langdon, Steve McKenna and Matt Johnson lead the list.  Georges also had a go with all-time NHL tough guy Bob Probert.  Probert came out of his shirt (terribly cheap) and may have got an edge on Georges.  Georges highlight in the fighting department this year would have to be his clear victory over Sandy McCarthy.  Georges landed a flurry of lefts for a convincing victory over one of the most highly regarded enforcers in the league.  Georges finished the year with a modest 123 PIM.  He can keep the PIM's low because he doesn't take stupid penalties or 10 minute penalties.  This is better for both him and the team.

Georges reached all expectations in the fighting department and he exceeded all expectations offensively.  He played in all but 6 games and of those only twice was he a healthy scratch.  He finished the year with 8 goals and 8 assists for 16 points.  Georges scored 3 goals in a game against the Los Angeles Kings for his first career hat trick.  A good number of his goals were in important situations and sparked the team.  Georges' stats, although very impressive, don't really show how dominant his line was.  The combination of Laraque, Dowd and Devereaux was the only Oiler line that wasn't changed for months.  They gave 100% every shift and were very exciting.  There is no telling how much better he can get offensively.  He is dominant on the boards and is getting very good and going to the net.  He has excellent hands for a big guy.  All that we can do is sit and wait for next season where Georges may very well get 25 points.

All in all this was a great year for Georges and to cap it all off he was voted Most Popular Player by the fans.  Georges is a great player and a quality guy in the community.  He is a true asset to the Oilers.  It is his contract year and lets hope that the Oilers give him a good, long contract.

Georges has already matched his 8G-8A-16P totals of last year, he also has 102 PIM and looks like he will set new career marks in each of these categories.  The problem is that he has not had the same linemates for more than one game at a time and that is really hurting him.  He no longer is on a line where they can dominate for a 40 second shift.  He hasn't been given linemates for a long enough time to gel together.  One game he plays 20 minutes, the next he plays 5.  He is not able to go out and get in guys faces because Mactavish benches him as soon as he gets a penalty.  He was made a fool of in San Jose earlier this year by Mactavish when the coach would not let Georges do as he wished and get revenge on Marchment for a cheap shot on Weight.  The thing is, that is just the most blatant example of Georges' hands being tied and it actually happens nearly every game.  How can he be as effective as everybody knows he can be with Mactavish handling him like this.

Despite Mactavish, Georges has managed to drop the mits 10 times this year amassing an 8-1-1 record.  He has dismantled tough young guns Eric Boulton and Reed Low and handled veterans Tie Domi, Jamie Pushor and Brian Marchment quite nicely.  He has also gotten decisions over Sandy McCarthy, Matt Johnson and Lyle Odelein.  He basically had a non-fight with tough young Ranger Dale Purinton and his only loss came against Wade Belak when Georges got caught up in his own jersey and Belak was able to control the second half of the fight.  Even in the loss Georges managed to open up a cut between Belak's eyes that led to him putting on a visor for the rest of the game.

So far Georges has had a solid year, but not as good as he could have had, in my opinion, if Mactavish would take the leash off.  Some very untalented Edmonton media (John Short and his sidekick to be specific) showed their lack of intellegence with a recent show on why they should trade Georges Laraque.  This will not happen.  The Oilers brass are happy with his performance this year as I think most fans are.  Hey, look back at my 00-01 Season Preview.  My point and fight majors predictions are on pace to be bang on.

Off the ice Georges continues to be great in the community.  Countless stops at childrens schools, thousands upon thousands of autographs.  He stayed a couple of extra hours after the skills competition to sign stuff for fans, and signed 1000 autographs at the recent West Edmonton Mall one hour autograph session.  He wouldn't leave until everybody was satisfied.  This is the part of Georges that makes him a special player in our city.  Some players see these autograph sessions as an obligation but Georges loves to do it.

The playoff stretch will be a grind and let's hope that Georges is used a little more wisely.

After a great first half of the season it looked like a career year was a lock, but shortly after the All Star break Georges' point totals leveled off.  Mostly due to a lack of quality ice time and a revolving door of linemates.  However, once Georges got regular linemates in Rem Murray and Shawn Horcoff Georges' point totals went on the rise again and this is what gave him the career year he predicted he would have.  To me the most amazing offensive stat for Georges is that he had 3 multi-goal games.

Georges also had a great year when the gloves hit the ice.  He finished the year with 16 fighting majors.  Here are some of the highlights of those 16.  With his reputation as basically the top fighter in the NHL today his fight card consisted of a lot of young enforcers who wanted to try their luck against him.  Reed Low, Eric Boulton and Todd Fedoruk all ended up on the recieving end of lopsided decisions.  Georges had two more tussles with Grimson, both ending in draws.  He finally got to go with Domi and got the decision over the veteran enforcer.  He got a slight edge over McCarthy in their rematch, as well as against Matt Johnson.  He scored big wins over Marchment and Pushor but his two biggest wins came against Sami Helanius, who got a badly bloody nose in a flurry of lefts, and Ryan Vandenbussche who got hammered in a 2 punch TKO in which Vandenbussche's nose was made an absolute mess of.  The only guy who had success against Georges was Wade Belak who scored a win and a draw against Georges. 

Georges' most successful NHL season will definately have his fans looking forward to next year, but first he will hopefully enjoy some success in this years playoffs.

Georges saw his playoff roll significantly increased from last year.  He got a goal and an assist in the six games and got decent amounts of ice time.  He embarrased Derian Hatcher at least a hundred times by practically bullying him.  Georges saw ice time at crucial points in games including overtimes.  He was a huge part in the game 3 last minute comeback that ranks among the best I've ever seen.

Georges had a good series and showed that he is a reliable playoff player.  It will be a long summer for the big guy who wears his heart on his sleeve, but I'm sure that he will come back next year looking more hungry than ever.

My predictions this year for Georges are 15 goals and 20 assists which would be career highs.  I would also expect him to rack up between 15-20 fighting majors.

Georges' season was an interesting one, to say the least.  He ended the year on a dreadful scoring slump not having scored in something like 30 games.  His point numbers were down in all categories, finishing with 5-14-19.  He was quite a bit off of his nice 13-16-29 of a year ago.  With that being said, he actually created more chances on his own this year than in any other year.  He just could not get any bounces.  In my opinion the biggest reasons why the point totals suffered was the revolving linemate door and the fact that the team this year just didn't get the puck to the front of the net when Georges was standing there as good as last season.  Georges also  suffered through a pretty bad hand injury for a good stretch of the year.  He only missed 2 games but he was unable to shoot well or fight for about 10 games. 

Georges year with the gloves off was good.  He had 18 fighting majors which is pretty good for the modern NHL and sets a new personal high.  Some of the highlights from the 18 fights were beatings of Nazarov twice, Sawyer twice, Downey, Berube and Dingman.  The biggest win of the year was a one sided beating of Stu Grimson.  Unfortunately this fight pretty much ended the Reaper's career.  Add to these a couple good scraps with Jody Shelley and a good one with Jim McKenzie (that left Georges with a black eye) and you have a pretty good year.  The were a couple of uneventful fights with Scott Parker and a couple other guys but not every fight can be a beauty.

All in all it was an average year for Georges, but it was capped off nicely with Georges winning the Community Service Award for the Oilers.  Georges plans to lose a bit of weight in the off season.  He has said he wants to be 240 but I think it would be a mistake to go under 245-250.  Hopefully whatever happens he will be able to get back to his point producing ways next season.

With Mike Grier being traded Georges is going to be expected to step into a new role and one that many people believe he is ready for.  I like what they are doing with Georges in terms of ice time, offense and defensive responsibility, but I do not like the fact that they don't want him to fight anymore.  I hope he doesn't go the way of many tough guys and forget what got him to the NHL, but I also understand that these guys are playing for their next contract and points get the contracts.  Not fights.  Hopefully Georges can find a good balance between his two roles.  This year could be the biggest year of Georges career.

My predictions for Georges seasons have traditionally been a tad optimistic but this season I truly believe they are attainable unless the coaching staff doesn't do what they have said they will.  Georges will score 15-20 goals and add 15 assists and I'd say about 12 fights.  That last number I hope I'm wrong about.

The year started out great a goal in the first game and 17 minutes of ice time but from there Georges' ice time has been up and down and he is constantly being switched from one line to another.  It is ridiculous how inconsistent the coaches have been with him this year, often sitting him down for entire 3rd periods.  Aside from this Georges has been hampered by injury problems.  An injured wrist was followed by a car accident and then a severely cut elbow.  Just when he was back and started to play his best hockey of the year and actually was getting some ice time he developed a knee injury that required surgery.  Georges has tallied 5 goals and 3 assists in 36 games so far admittedly he hasn't played his best all year but to me that comes from being jerked around by the coaching staff all season long.

On the fighting side Georges has 9 majors.  His fighting numbers are down mostly because of the injuries but also due to the low number of solid heavyweights in the Western conference.  With the NHL trying hard to reduce fighting it seems that fewer teams are dressing legitimate enforcers.  His best fight coming in a beating of Darcy Hordichuk. 

All in all this isn't the season Georges was probably looking for going into a contract negotiation.  Let's hope that when the knee heels up he will come back and finish the year strongly.

On the fighting side of things Georges did enough to hold his rank as the leagues top enforcer.  It wasn't his best year with the mitts off but it had its moments.  The injuries really affected this part of his game.  A lot of the time he simply wasn't able to fight because of one injury or another.  He had nice wins over Thornton, Sawyer, Hordichuk, McKenna, Odgers, Low and Belak even though a lot of people can't seem to see that Georges landed a big punch at the end of the Belak fight that stung him.  He had a couple more hugfests with Johnson.  His two fights with Shelley weren't great with Shelley getting the edge in one and Georges in the other.  His other fight with Belak was a draw.  The crown jewel of his fight card had to be Maxim Kuznetsov who was unlucky enough to be the biggest guy on the ice when Georges was in a bad mood.  Maxim did good just to hold on tight enough to survive.

Overall an average season but it was highlited by a second straight community service award.

Right off the bat in game 1 Georges started the play that led to the game winner.  He scored a huge goal in game 3.  He assisted on Comrie's goal in game 5 and in game 6 he made a nice play to assist on Ryan Smyth's goal.  Aside from scoring Georges was probably the teams most physical forward with a number of big hits in the series.

Georges certainly showed that when he needs to elevate his game he can unlike many of the other Oilers who struggled in the playoffs.  People who thought he was expendable during the season are probably singing a different tune now.  Hey, who would have thought Georges would have been a better playoff pool pick than Hull, Yzerman and Fedorov.

This year he has gotten himself in even better shape then last season.  I have never seen him in the shape he is in now.  If he stays healthy it could be a good season for him.  He will probably be playing with Raffi Torres which could be interesting.  Georges may be cleaning up after Raffi a few times this year.  Add to that many of the teams in the west have added top enforcers so this may be a busy year for Georges.  Judging by the preseason it also looks like Georges may end up on the second PP unit which would could be huge for his offensive numbers.  For this years version of the Oilers to make the playoffs it will take big years from everybody including Georges.

In the past I don't think I have even been close to predicting Georges numbers.  I am always a bit too optimistic.  However, I am not going to change my ways.  I will yet again predict a good year for Georges.  I will say 12 Goals and 13 assists for 25 points and you can add 18 fights because of how tough the west has gotten.  I really believe that he can do this if he stays healthy and gets the ice time.