What a weird year Alexis Lafreniere. Granted, it was a weird year for most Ranges, but it felt like Alexis Lafreniere was the recipient of both extremes of the fan base. Lafreniere had a brutal start to the 2025-2026 season, as did much of the team. But Lafreniere found something in the second half of the season, not coincidentally aligned with the Artemi Panarin trade, and now Lafreniere went from potential trade piece to critical part of the future.
Alexis Lafreniere’s 2025-2026 season is split into two parts, before Panarin’s final game with the Rangers on January 26th and after. In 29 games after Panarin was held out of the lineup and subsequently traded, Lafreniere put up 14 goals and 14 assists for 28 points. In the 53 games before, his line was 10-19-29. All it took for Lafreniere to become a point per game player, at least in a small sample, was a boost in the lineup and consistent powerplay time. Funny how that works.
Lafreniere’s lack of production to start the season was one thing to note, but it wasn’t because he was playing poorly. Lafreniere had the best defensive season of his career by a country mile, and he was clearly driving play as well. His Evolving-Hockey stats are some of the best on the team, even better than consensus best forward Mika Zibanejad. His microstats from All Three Zones show strong play in areas of need like defensive zone exits and forechecking.
Suffice it to say, Laf’s early season production struggles overshadowed his largely solid play. Funny enough, production usually comes first and process follows. Laf had it in reverse, where process came first and production eventually followed.
So why couldn’t Laf score? The answer is fairly simple: Once he became the focal point of the offense and got powerplay time, his confidence and production soared.
Looking back at Alexis Lafreniere’s 2023-2024 season where he put up 28 goals, he took 217 shots on goal and was a focal point of the 5v5 offense. Laf was then deferring to Panarin too much at 5v5, and combined with no powerplay time leads to no production. With Panarin gone, Laf put up that 14-14-28 line, with 7-3-10 coming with the man advantage, a normal 36% of his scoring line. Funny how that works.
Alexis Lafreniere is far from a perfect first overall pick, but it does appear many of the concerns may have been overblown and a product of no powerplay time. At the very least, the end to Laf’s season warrants a significant re-evaluation of his status within the organization. A point per game winger at $7.45 million is an absolute steal, especially one with metrics like Laf’s.
Patience is a virtue.