Former Oiler Georges Laraque (3/17/26)

0:00Hey, it's Bob Stoffer. I just wanted to let you know that you can listen to Oilers Now, Add Free, on Amazon Music, included with Prime. Spring starts at the Home Depot, and we are bringing the heat to your backyard this season. Fire up the flavor with our wide variety of grills for under $300, like the next grill for burner gas grill that's perfect for hosting your spring cookout. Then set the scene and turn your outdoor space into the go-to spot the patio sets for every budget. Bring it this season with grills that deliver flavor and patios that set the vibe from the Home Depot. Start your spring with low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot, exclusively supplies the Home Depot.com slash price match for details. America leads the world in medicine development. It matters. We get new medicines first, nearly three years faster. Five million Americans go to work because we make medicines here at home, and not relying on other countries keeps us safe. But China is racing to overtake us. Will we let them? Or will we choose to stay ahead? When America leads, America cures.

1:02Let's go to Washington to keep us in the lead. Learn how at AmericaCures.com, paid for by Pharma. Well, there's now live from Rodgers Place. We are a nice district. It is a game night. The San Jose Sharks are in town. This is Well, there's now, brought to you by World of Spots. Coming up, and we're going to get to this right off the get-go here. The top story, unfortunately, for legacy heating and cooling home and opayments to know interest for one year. That is how you build a legacy legacy heating and cooling. The Ebonton Oilers will not have Leon Drys settle the rest of the way in the regular season. The team announcing today, roughly just after 1230, that Drys settle is out with a lower body injury. He will miss the remainder of the regular season. Here is where I tell you, and by the way, Derek, you can give our guests a call right now. He's waiting for you. Here is where I tell you that the Oilers last year in the final 14 games of the regular

2:07season did not have on any night, both Conor Motivator Leon Drys settle in a lineup. In fact, they think in four or five of the games, they didn't have either Motivator Drys settle play. They went eight, five, and one in their final 14 games again in none of those games that they have both Motivator Drys settle playing. It really affected their power play. Ebonton went eight, five, and one, but their power play was 25.6% in the first 68 games last year, six in the league. It was just 17% in the final 14 games, which was 28th dropping their power play to 12th overall. So the Oilers are going to have to make do without the guy known as the King of Leon, Leon Drys settle. We head off to the River Creek Resort, Casino Hotline, the River Creek Resort Casino Donut Miss Eye Valley, March the 21st tickets at the River Creek Resort.com excitement. You can also text us on the Ashley Fine Floor's text line 7804518800 find the new floor as you always wanted at 143rd Street, 100 love to have a new or head to Ashley Fine Floor's dot com for me. For more information, I will tell you and you can text us and give me your thoughts.

3:11Simply put, the Oilers are going to have to win differently. They don't have Drys settle. They don't have the one to punch. They've not played David and Drys settle a lot together, five in five this year. Other players are going to step up. I don't envision their power play being nearly as effective. They have to play better five on five hockey. That's head off to the River Creek Resort, Casino Hotline. And welcome back to the show. He is an Edmonton sporting icon, the former heavyweight champion of the National Hockey League. He's our Oilers now headliner for Wilhock beef jerky. Others can try to imitate, but nobody can duplicate the great flavor of Wilhock beef jerky only available in LaDuke. It is big George LaRock out of Montreal. Hello, George. How you doing? Long time no talk. Long time no talk, my man. And here's the deal. When I reached out yesterday, I'll be honest, I did not know the severity of the Drys Sidal entry. Part of the reason why I wanted to have you on the show was to talk about Edmonton's immediate response to the player that was involved in the incident from the Nashville Predators

4:13and that was Aussie Wisewatt. We'll get to that in a second, George. But this is tough news for the Edmonton Oilers because every team has injuries. But as you know, Leon Drysidal is certainly one of the top five players in the National Hockey League. Your thoughts on a big loss in oil country, losing Leon, the rest of the way for the regular season? No, he's definitely one of the top best pass to the best five player in the league aggregate with you. You know, the scoring, starting with Conor and Leon, he was close to 100 point season again. It's incredible, you know, who does the love scene is shot in the par play from the goal line. It's unbelievable when he does to this team and I'm fortunate he is. And you know, the one thing is that I could say is that, look at the Pittsburgh Penguin right now. Up through in the division, without crossby, without walk in, walk in, just came back from the suspension. He was suspended and the team was still managing, you know, to help float.

5:15So sometimes when a guy like that leaves, guys want to show that, you know, you know, what guys we could do the job for a bit like, let's show Leon that we could keep winning and like stay up through in the division until he comes back, that's our job to do so because he helps us so many times. So let's just keep winning and guys that are going to take a spot and new roles and showing all key contributors that it could be. But you know, I'm going to go there again and it's always the same issue with the team, but I know it's goal-tending. It is goal-tending. I know that, you know, the team tried something and unfortunately it didn't work out the way that they wanted to. Thank God, Ingram is doing a really good job. He's doing a really good job. Yeah, he's playing unbelievable and I heard what happened with Jerry and the criticism, you know, like of his teammates and what's the goal that they did that?

6:16Yeah, yeah, see, we want to specify, Jerry made a comment post game against Minnesota that in here, by my county gave up two bad goals in that game and he said, but the team, you know, they were giving up lots of chances and as you know, George Goli's can't do that. And Jerry hasn't stopped the puck since and then I made a comment about a practice about a week and a half ago and it got interpreted differently and I just said that Jerry had a, it was an, I'd never seen a guy have that rough of a practice in my life and I could just envision that somebody on the team might, at some point, a leader might say something. Unfortunately, there was some communication after that the result, there was never an altercation with Jerry and one of his teammates, but I know what you're saying. He can't be saying, hey guys, you need to like just stop the puck. He's, they're going to need Jerry to get his game together, George. We know that. Yes. He's going to play better. Two teams. One cup. The prime time stage is set for the TGL presented by SoFi finals Los Angeles Golf Club versus

7:17Tiger's Jupiter links. Keep up. Tune in Monday, March 23rd, 9 p.m. Eastern on ESPN 2 and Tuesday, March 24th, 7 p.m. Eastern on ESPN and on the ESPN app. How many discounts does USA Auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount, safe driver discount, a new vehicle discount, storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit us a dot com slash auto discounts, restrictions apply. Yeah, no, but you know, when that tree happened, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was not one of the guys that was like, you know, after the fact before it even, before it even made the trade, Jerry was available to all the team last year, was sent to the waivers and, you know, he had this like bad beginning, like good start with a penguin this year and, you know, to me was not the answer, but yeah, I know that the GM, you know, it's kind of king. You have to make him fast because, you know, you want to win now.

8:19You want to show Connor that you committed to get to resolve the things and net, but, but Bob, there's one thing that I need to have that is very important. I don't know if you talked about it. I've been looking at Skinner with the penguins and, you know, it's not that Skinner is better since he's been traded there. The way that the penguins play defensively with the forward is different than the way that the others are playing defensively. Every time teams come in the offense in our defensive zone, defensively, it's a nightmare often, you know, like the way that the play is open in our zone and the quality shot the goalie is getting and how sometimes how some of the forward cheating other than be reliable more defensively makes it so Skinner is playing with a system in front of them that is better defensively, and that's why he's better

9:20with the penguins and George, he hasn't, he hasn't killed like to be honest with you. In fairness to Stewart, and I want to be really careful of what I say here, because I like Stewart George. He was starting to play better in Edmonton before the trade. He was starting to settle down. The whole team had a rough start. Like at one point this year at Coleman Bouchard, we're both double digit minus players. Okay. Mimitius Hicom's plus 26 Bouchard's plus 18. By the way, Skinner is at 892 with a 9.5 and 4 record. Okay. In Pittsburgh, Ingram is 10.6 and 2 with an 895 safe percentage with Edmonton. But I hear what you're saying. Like, you know what? Jerry wasn't necessarily wrong when he said the team was leaking too many chances against Minnesota. I think for some players, they don't like Goli's talking about the defense in front of them. Yeah. You can't say that. You're in a Goli, obviously. If you're going to say that, you know, just stop the pot.

10:20You know, just stop the guys. You need the guys to have your back. If you're going to say that, they're not going to block stuff in front of you. Right? It's something phenomenal in rules. George, you're 100% right. The Oiter's team defense has to be better. And I'm just going to give you the simple numbers and people can draw their own conclusions. Edmonton is second in goals for and first in the power play. But the problem is they're 27th in goals against. They're 26th on the penalty kill. And they're 30th in the league and safe percentage. They haven't got enough saves and part of its team defense. And part of it is the Goli's haven't stopped enough pucks. And now they don't have dry settle. And I still want to circle back to how Edmonton responded versus maybe how Toronto responded. But George, they don't have dry settle. They simply have to play better defense. Delta in front of England. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, they have to because they have like the person like they came on paper. The others are better than the penguins.

11:22Like the penguins like look at the way they're playing right now. They're playing a system that defensively makes it the job much easier for the Goli. Edmonton has to have a better tied in defense and not. Because there's no way the amount of goal that we're giving the quality chances that we're giving is too high is too much. Yeah. And maybe now that Leon is gone and then maybe we'll score less goal. But it gives a chance to the team to play tighter defensively. Because Bob, I watched these games and often defensively. It's a nightmare to look at all these guys are playing. So Jerry was right, but you can't say it. And then he saw he could compare structure that he was playing in Pittsburgh versus in Edmonton. So what I'm saying is that with Leon gun, hopefully no block is going to put up a system where they're going to play tighter defensively. Because you know, all search at the end when you fight for playoffs, but you're going to score less than that goal because people are getting a playoffs mode.

12:23And you can't get all gun teams all the time. It's going to go to win every time. So you're going to have to win close game like two, one, three, two. That's all the playoffs is in the start with playing tighter. We can't do anything for goal pending. We're not going to get another one. We have to go with what we have right now. And the one thing that scares me, Bob, is that the others, they have to pass through the first round because if they don't and we have kind of that fine for two years, don't want to go anywhere else. But I know the nature of business is winning. He's a generous role player that cannot be tired before winning the cup. In this, and with the staff, they hasn't played, but no one has anything back to sailboat him. What he's doing. But he feels that the team that he has in front of him can't win is going to be gone. Well, that's why it's easy. It's certainly easier to sell winning when you win. You know what I mean? Like you go and they got a chance for reset. Again, we don't know how long dry settles out for. We just know that he's out for the rest of the regular season.

13:24Now, I want to ask you, so we had two situations. One in Toronto where Red Cogutus stuck his leg out on Austin Matthews. I know Morgan Riley said he should have done something. I was shocked. Nobody in the Leafs did anything. Okay. I was shocked. We had the situation the other night. You know, involving Ozzy Wiseblatt. And that was not a dirty play. But it was, it was, you know, he hit, he popped Leon. Pretty good. And Leon's two line mates, Vasilie Patcolson, who stepped up once this year with cova civic when cova civic flat McDavid. Steped up once this year when Ridley Greg hit Matthias Echelm. And now a third time when Leon got hurt, uh, got drilled. He stepped up that time and so did Casperic Captain. And Captain used a stick and I got no problem with that. Like if you're not a guy that's a accomplished fighter, go ahead and chop him across the wrist, chop him in the leg, do whatever. What did, what did you think of it? And then the orders didn't stop.

14:25Frederick went after, uh, Wiseblatt, uh, Matthias Echelm went after Wiseblatt. Actually Wiseblatt took a penalty in the sequence, um, and then Jake Walman threw a big hit on Walman. What did you think of the orders, George? As a former enforcer, um, you were as good a fighters. There wasn't a league. What did you think of Edmonton's response on Wiseblatt? Okay, so to start just to say quickly in Toronto, what Toronto did, it shows you how there's no parent left on that team. When you captain get hurt like this by dirty play and nobody reacts, Morgan and Riley to say, oh, we should have, I should have. Now you didn't, it's your captain. Rock a good ass, which is as a history of earning guys. You don't step up for him. This team's going to be dismantled in a summer. They have no heart that team is done. There's nothing more to say about this team. Everybody's like, I don't seem to have choose wanted to be signed with this team. Marners done. We see the effect that it has. They're going to miss the playoff matches out of there. Nobody steps up for him. He's done now for the orders.

15:26Okay, so it's let's say if I was a player, right? And I was on that team. And I saw the way that the guy responded. This is what a team is all about. Team spirit, like caring for one another. There's guys as you know, as you know, them well above that. If somebody does something and he's not a heavyweight, there's something just nothing that I could do. But when I was playing back then, we had many guys that had gritt that knew that if there was a little feisty player that would that would just turn over to me, guys would not be afraid to step up for one another. And the always team are like this. You know, there's no heavy weight in them. It's an anymore. But there's guy that have gritt and have wanted each other's back. And you know, in any child, it's not just dirty hit. When you hit your start, you've been with a clean check. You want to respond to sure everyone that you know what? You're not going to hit our best players like this. We're not going to accept this.

16:27That's all it is. Even if it's a clean check, I left team out, Bob. Because this is how you know how close the team is. And how are you careful, one another? And those teams, that's all they win. And again, this team made to the Sonic up left two years in a row. So this spirit on this team is incredible. It is incredible. And I'm going to add something crazy to the fact that Bob, any team that makes it two years in a row in the Sonic up final, Wisconsin as a goalie, in a way, kind of won the cup. Because it's the goalie that they played against. It was kind of enough. And the first year, we made it to game seven. So this spirit on a team has to be so good to make it that far. And you straighten the bond in on this team. And I love seeing that. So that's why those guys, you have each other's back like that. You have Leon that plays big minutes with a team. That sacrifice himself all the time. Getting targeted by by the top of these all the time. This is teammate reacting like this. You don't get it feels to him.

17:29Then you can have a Leon that's going to want to come back to play for these guys. That's going to come back and play hurt because of the way they responded. That's all you have like close team teams that could win. And the mentality of like acting that takes just takes care of one another. And not just always relying on one guy to do that. There's your job. How much do you like houses, facility, but goals? Look, the goalie trade hasn't worked in season. There's no way to say one goalie trade did. The goalie trade for Conor Angeramort. Unfortunately, to this point, it has not worked for Tristan Jari, which is not to say that Jari couldn't at some point turn the tide and, you know, reclaim that spot. But facility put goals in George was acquired for fourth round pick. He's got 15 goals, 30 points, 56 penalty minutes, over 200 hits. And he's plus 16 this year. He's playing 15 minutes game. He doesn't play in the power play. He's got 15 goals. What do you think of him? You know, we talked about him before.

18:29He's a truck. He's a tank. It's unbelievable. You know, it's funny because a couple years ago, nobody knew who he was. And he was like under. He was one of the most underrated player on the team. And you remember when you fought and people were so surprised, when we found fights were like, oh my god. Like he has that in him. He's unreal. Like he's so important to this team. He has so much grit. It's incredible. And it's a success that he has right now. I'm not even surprised because he's such a hard worker. And he's hard to play against. And he's so physical. He's unreal for the to this team. And I'm glad that with all the change that they did, that they were able to keep him. Because you know, another thing I'm going to have is that it's okay. That rob robberk was gone. Like because you're one of money that yeah, that the man like was too much. But all the way. I don't understand why we didn't match this. It wasn't that much. Well, and he and you know, it's got me basically. They traded to get put calls and kind of to replace all the way.

19:31That was kind of the theory. When you have a place got a higher offensive ceiling. All right, but I could, but I could tell you when you're on this team right now. Like men Japanese that I would keep all the wins. Ted of yeah, right? Well, or a year ago, a year ago, a year ago. Are you a skater? Yeah, it's fair because it's just, it's just, but because it wasn't that much to match. So I was surprised I'm not moved to let him go. I was angry. It happened in the first place. You know that we talked about it. I was never gone. They both should have been signed. George, we just went 15 minutes. We got to do this again. I'll call you in a couple of weeks by man. Anytime, anytime, brother, anytime. All right. Thank you very much. That is George LaRocque. He's our headliner today for the folks at Wilhock, Beef Turkey. We'll step out at 354 in oil country. You're listening to Oilers now. This Friday, the time traveling comedy movie of the year arrives. Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice only on Hulu. The film stars Vince Vaughn, James Morrison, and Ace of Gonzalez in a wild action comedy about one disastrous night

20:33that spirals out of control. And here's the twist. There are two Vince Vaughn's. Don't miss Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice, written and directed by Ben David Grubinsky. Streaming this Friday, only on Hulu, rated R. My day kicks off with the refreshing social synergy drink. Then straight to the gym. Pre-game pick up, back home to meal prep, time for my fire session shift. One more Celsius gotta keep the lights on. When the three alarm hits, I'm ready. Celsius, live, fit, go. Grab a cold refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locatenowatcellsius.com. Quickly into the Ashley Fine floors text line. This text settles 780 Bob. Leon being out genuinely scares me. This year is too tight. Unlike last year where we were not doing so bad. And this season, it's its own story. And I'm scared of how this is playing out. Well, actually, dry subtle accelerated his process to return for a couple games last year and scored the, I think he got his 50th

21:36and the game winner against Dustin Wolfen Calgary to ensure a playout spot for Edmonton. That was like probably with four or five, maybe six or seven games left. The others have 14 left at this time. Leon missed 11 games. Again, he can text us. Connor missed off the top. My head, I think he missed 15 last year. Penner's pancakes. As I'm taking this as a blessing in disguise and expect everyone in the team to realize that now's the time to step up and get dialed in. All right, special thanks again to our headliner today for Wilhock Beef Turkey, George LaRocke. Lots to get to next half hour of the segment. Keep Texas on the Ashley Fine floors text line. Your thoughts on the impact of the absence of the undribe subtle for the rest of the regular season and what the Edmonton Oilers need to do is succeed. Text us, your list of the Oilers now and Thomas Ties has an 880 news weather traffic update. Welcome to Survivor 50 Wednesdays on Global. We chose you to represent 25 years

22:40of the greatest adventure on television and all we want is everything. This is the survivor Coliseum. What is do or die? Like your torch and be a part of history. Survivor, all new Wednesdays at 80s turn on global. Stream on Stack TV.