What We Learned: Alexis Lafrenière's new deal just makes sense
The New York Rangers made Alexis Lafrenière a very rich man on Friday, coming to terms on a seven-year deal with an average annual value of $7.45 million. It begins next season, he will be 24 years old.
This didn't always feel like a particularly probable outcome.
Early in his career, there was a lot of talk that he was a bust, or at least trending that way. He was barely getting power-play time in his first two years. He was playing a lot with Filip Chytil and, later, Kaapo Kakko. There aren't a ton of players who are going to be particularly productive with that kind of usage, let alone a guy who's like 21 and probably expected to be the offensive engine from the wing. And that's even if you leave aside that Lafrenière's development as a player was likely hurt by COVID. His rookie year was only 56 games and his draft year, and any subsequent practice time, was cut short as well. It's understandable that coaches wouldn't want to potentially throw a young NHLer who just went through all that into the fire of top-six matchups and give him power-play time for a team that's trying to be competitive. But at some point they had to let him sink or swim.
And so, when Peter Laviolette was hired ahead of Lafrenière's age-22 season, he took the floaties off the No. 1 pick's arms. He went onto a line with Vincent Trocheck and a near-perennial MVP candidate in Artemi Panarin, and no one has ever looked back. Major underlying numbers across the board at 5-on-5. His production has increased dramatically; he was always a reliable goalscorer but now has more full-strength primary assists in his last 90 games than he did in his first 216. He personally shoots the puck a lot more, and generally shoots it from more dangerous areas.
I know we all had to act like the latest "Kid Line" was somehow revelatory, but it turns out that when you put players in a position to succeed offensively, and they have a certain baseline skill level, wow, they can score—in fact, a lot.
The jump from "a guy who produces at a surprisingly decent rate given how he's used" to "a guy who can almost score 30 goals" is, in this context, not that surprising. But the fact that he's still only on the second power-play unit means there's room for him to grow as a "points" guy. Of course, given the success of the Rangers' first power-play group over the last few seasons, and so far this year (they have five goals in about 25 minutes together, compared to one in about nine minutes for the second unit), there's no reason whatsoever to fix something that's not broken. However, there will come a time when, say, one of the older guys on that top group gets hurt or simply slumps for a bit. At that point, Lafrenière is the only choice to get bumped up. If that scenario works out, well, it might be a Wally Pipp/Lou Gehrig situation (not that Lafrenière will have a Gehrig-level impact on an already elite power play, but Gehrig wasn't a Gehrig-level player when Pipp got that headache, y'know?).
The ceiling here is tough to guess because we just haven't seen Lafrenière get the kind of runout that a lot of players with his draft/prospect pedigree go this long without getting a chance on the top unit. At 5-on-5, there are only 40-something players with more goals and primary assists per 60 minutes since the start of last season (he's 48th in G/60, 45th in A1/60, and 47th in points/60). That might not be quite All-Star production, but it's in the ballpark.
If you want to be cynical — and I obviously do — it's easy to chalk some of this up to him just kinda being on a line with two guys who were productive before he came along. Certainly this is the Rangers juicing him a little bit. But Panarin's underlying numbers, for example, are significantly better with Lafrenière than with Mika Zibanejad and the scoring rate is up very slightly. That's all you can really ask for. To circle back, Laviolette put him in a sink-or-swim scenario and gave him a little bit of help to get the arms and legs churning. Now, he might not be Katie Ledecky out there — I think that's an Islanders thing — but 90 games in you have to say he's swimming laps with ease.
It wasn't so long ago that you could easily criticize the Rangers for failing to develop forward talent, which was disappointing given their draft position in the previous several years. Even leaving aside Chytil's injury history, he hadn't exactly turned out to have an especially high ceiling and while Kakko seems to be getting there in some respects (his underlying numbers are insane this season, but individual production is not), let's just say he's not going second overall if you do a 2019 redraft right now. But Lafrenière is, at this point, a success story with room to grow. There are qualifications to that success, for sure. But he's worth a $7.45-million AAV and potentially quite a bit more in the next few years as he maybe gets more PP1 time and continues to mature as a player, especially with the salary cap likely to continue rising.
You wouldn't have guessed that two or three years ago. Pretty good.
What We Learned
Anaheim Ducks: As long as you're saying "this player should play like this better player," you can probably aim a little higher without even leaving the family.
Boston Bruins: They won one game where they gave a division rival a free standings point, so everything's fixed.
Buffalo Sabres: The Sabres getting hot early in the season and inspiring some "maybe this is the year" takes. A tale as old as time. Maybe Lucy won't move that football at the last second this time…
Calgary Flames: All anyone is talking about after this one is a late penalty that should have been called but because of the circumstances (late in a tied game) is seen as "controversial." I might have tried to score on the power play or perhaps kill more than half of the other team's power plays or maybe even not allowed a shorthanded goal, but that's just me.
Carolina Hurricanes: They've won five of the last six, all but one of which were on the road. Good team.
Chicago: This year's start is worse than last year's start. But hey, they're playing San Jose on Thursday, so…
Colorado Avalanche: I'm honestly surprised he hasn't done it already.
Columbus Blue Jackets: You don't say.
Dallas Stars: The Stars are off to a great start. I wonder if going to Finland for a week to play the Panthers twice is going to affect them.
Detroit Red Wings: Read this headline and then consider that they lost to the Buffalo Sabres immediately thereafter.
Edmonton Oilers: Not that you want to be in a position where you're looking to "break out" against the Penguins, but the way things are going in Edmonton, you take what you can get.
Florida Panthers: Hey wait a second, the Panthers went 5-2-1 without their best player? And now he's coming back?
Los Angeles Kings: Not exactly the toughest stretch lately — Montreal, Anaheim, Vegas, San Jose, Utah — but they keep winning. By the way, guess which one of those they lost 6-1.
Minnesota Wild: Your first regulation loss just can't be 7-5 to a team on a six-game losing streak. Tough one.
Montreal Canadiens: Is it the system or the players?
Nashville Predators: This is maybe the must-watch game of the week.
New Jersey Devils: Uh oh!
New York Islanders: Man it's crazy that bringing these two guys back didn't help matters.
New York Rangers: Nice to bounce back but you can't call the other team "lowly" if you beat them 2-1 and give up 33 shots. They gave you a game!
Ottawa Senators: You're telling me the Senators are playing a little on the disappointing side? Please say it ain't so!
Philadelphia Flyers: Funny how that works.
Pittsburgh Penguins: They're officially one of those "I don't know what the solution is here" teams. They're probably gonna fire the coach soon but how much good can that do?
San Jose Sharks: They've lost nine straight to start the season two years in a row. First team to ever do that. Incredible.
Seattle Kraken: Seems like they just don't have it. Two regulation wins through nine games. Brutal.
St. Louis Blues: This is not what you'd call an encouraging headline regarding the state of your team.
Tampa Bay Lightning: Andrei Vasilevskiy picked up a shutout the other night against Washington. It was only the 35th of his career. Doesn't that feel low? Kinda weird.
Toronto Maple Leafs: Extremely. Everyone should be losing their minds that a team like this is .500. This doesn't happen every year at all.
Utah [fill in the blank later]: That parenthetical is doing some extremely heavy lifting.
Vancouver Canucks: Don't want to be in a situation where two of your best players don't seem to like each other very much. Just my opinion.
Vegas Golden Knights: Vegas is currently averaging almost five goals per game. They've scored 42 in nine. That's a lot.
Washington Capitals: What if the Caps are for real? Is it possible?
Winnipeg Jets: Best start for a coach in league history. Don't think many people saw that coming.
Play of the Weekend
This rocks.
https://x.com/bradytrett/status/1850382645957701751
Gold Star Award
Sean Couturier had 3-2—5 against Minnesota on Saturday. That's good enough for me. (He has one assist, a secondary, in the entire season before this game.)
Minus of the Weekend
Filip Gustavsson posted a .727 save percentage in that Flyers game, too. This is a guy who needs to stop worrying about scoring goals and try playing defense. Like Steve Yzerman. Ever heard of him???
Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week
User "MW6" is positing something:
A rare 3-way trade that might work out for all teams IMO.
Toronto receives:
Andrew Mangiapane (5,8M x1yr UFA)
Rasmus Andersson (4,6M x2yr UFA)
Washington receives:
Mitchell Marner (10,903 x1yr UFA)
Calgary receives:
Connor McMichael (2,1M x2yr RFA)
Timothy Liljegren (3,0M x2yr RFA)
Caps 1st 2026
