Should Alexis Lafreniere be playing for his Rangers future during stretch run
With every disappointing result in a season full of them, the New York Rangers find themselves looking more toward 2025-26 than an increasingly unlikely playoff run this season. Who will be a part of next season’s roster is perhaps their biggest question as a continued restructuring of the team looms this summer.
And while a former No. 1 overall pick in the NHL Draft who signed a lucrative extension to serve as a future cornerstone would seem to be a slam dunk to remain in a Blueshirt, that scenario might be more in question as this season to nowhere continues.
It would be completely unfair to scapegoat Alexis Lafreniere in a season when core players have underachieved across the board. Yet the 23-year-old right wing remains an outlier even amongst his teammates. While players like Mika Zibanejad, Artemi Panarin, Vincent Trocheck and K’Andre Miller have popped lately despite disheartening 2024-25 campaigns, Lafreniere, since a hot start to the season, has been unable to shake his funk and put together a stretch that harkens back to his ascendant 2023-24.
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The Alexis Lafreniere of 2023-24 has vanished for Rangers
It seems long ago now that Lafreniere played with fire and verve, crashing the net for dirty-area goals, finally flashing the elite puck skills that made him the consensus top prospect in the 2020 draft and topping it off with an abrasive on-ice persona. Lafreniere got in opponents’ faces, got in their heads and backed it up with production, hitting NHL career highs of 28 goals and 29 assists last season.
His confidence only seemed to grow when he was possibly the Rangers best forward in their run to the Eastern Conference Final, scoring eight goals with six assists in 16 games. In fact, he was one of the few forwards to step up his play in the conference final loss to the Florida Panthers, and appeared to be a star on the rise.
That player, though, has disappeared this season.
It would be inaccurate to say Lafreniere hasn’t had a good run of offense this season. He started out looking like he was picking up where he left off, with eight goals and eight assists in his first 19 games.
He has only six goals and 14 assists in 45 games since, astoundingly low numbers considering he plays on a line with Panarin, one of the League’s great distributors. While Panarin has had a down season by his lofty standards, he remains better than a point-per-game player in 2024-25 and has scored a goal in five straight games, to go with three assists.
Lafreniere has managed one goal in his past 17 games and none in 12.
The Rangers are licking their wounds after a lost weekend of playoff-positioning opportunity, picking up one of a possible four points against fellow Eastern Conference wild-card hopefuls in the Ottawa Senators and Columbus Blue Jackets. The Blueshirts have desperately needed meaningful contributions from Lafreniere for months now – contributions that just aren’t coming.
Lafreniere’s recent numbers are more than a bit deceiving – he’s recorded four assists in his past five games after going five straight without a point. Those assists, however, appear to be a coattail effect – all of them came on Panarin goals, with one being an empty-netter.
Lafreniere’s assist in the 7-3 loss to the Blue Jackets on Sunday was the result of a spectacular Panarin deflection, as he redirected Lafreniere’ wrist shot that was going well wide of the net. That he shot at all seemed to represent a very small victory – Lafreniere has recorded four shots on goal in the last five games, a trend that has remained consistent for most of the season.
The fifth-year player averaged 2.6 shots on goal per game last season, by far the best mark of his career. This season, he’s at 2.0 through 64 contests. For whatever reason, Lafreniere doesn’t shoot the puck very much anymore, including just five in his past seven games. With 18 games remaining, the Rangers probably shouldn’t expect that to change for the remainder of 2024-25. It follows that any hopes they might have for him to start scoring big goals again as they try to sneak into the Stanley Cup Playoffs are probably unrealistic as well.
The increasingly uncomfortable question the Rangers will have to confront this offseason, regardless of how 2024-25 ends, is whether Lafreniere’s breakout effort of 2023-24 was a fluke, the result of career seasons from Panarin (120 points) and his other linemate Trocheck (77). That forward unit was a juggernaut, among the best in the NHL as it powered the Rangers to the Presidents Trophy.
Yet that explanation seems far too simplistic when one watches Lafreniere’s body language, so passive, detached and lacking in assurance after he played with such brashness and belief that he belonged last season. Seemingly buried questions about fitness, skating and defense have resurfaced, with Lafreniere looking bad on a number of backchecking situations over the past few weeks in which he appeared slow, disinterested, or both (although to reiterate, Lafreniere is hardly the only Rangers player who has played poorly in that area in a shocking team-wide struggle to commit to defending all season).
Plus/minus is certainly not the be-all, end-all statistic. But Lafreniere is a stunning minus-16 this season. Lafreniere has been on ice for more high-danger chances against than for at even strength (214-203) and is tied with K’Andre Miller for most high-danger goals allowed (33) on the Rangers, per Natural Stat Trick.
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Alexis Lafreniere could be a casualty of Rangers roster reshaping
What that means for the offseason is difficult to say at this point. Rangers general manager Chris Drury thought he had pulled off a coup by getting Lafreniere under contract long-term last fall, at a number that at the time looked like the player might have settled for less than he was worth. It appeared certain that Lafreniere had put a halting start to his much-anticipated career behind him and finally grown into his skills.
Less than five months later, Lafreniere’s seven-year, $52 million deal that kicks in next season is a major concern Drury, never afraid to act boldly and without regard for optics (see: this season), is forced to evaluate if drastic action is required when it comes to what he thought was one of the club’s rising stars.
Does the GM look to move Lafreniere while he still has perceived value, perhaps for another talented youngster who might need a reset of sorts? The easy trade proposal would be a swap of Lafreniere for Anaheim Ducks forward Trevor Zegras, the Bedford, New York, product who piled up 126 points over the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons.
Like Lafreniere, Zegras has regressed, with similar questions about attitude and focus swirling around the highly-talented ninth-overall selection in the 2019 draft. Zegras has just 13 goals and 20 assists in 69 games over the past two seasons, with injury concerns also creeping into the conversation.
Such a trade is nothing more that speculation. There’s no evidence that Anaheim is interested in Lafreniere and his long-term extension, as the 23-year-old Zegras’s deal expires after next season. Perhaps it’s a possibility Drury, who hammered out a now-infamous trade for defenseman Jacob Trouba with Ducks GM Pat Verbeek in early December, can entice Verbeek again on this possible exchange of distressed assets. Maybe there are other high-reward reclamation cases that Drury could take on if he determines that Lafreniere and the team need to part ways.
While the Rangers don’t want to give up on a No. 1 overall draft pick who showed such potential in 2023-24, Drury hasn’t been in a sentimental mood all season. He recognized the need to not run it back with the same group after the 2024 Eastern Conference Final loss, and has acted without regard for image or worrying about ruffling feathers ever since – at times to his detriment.
Drury’s harsh but effective disposal of Trouba and veteran Barclay Goodrow was followed by the in-season trades of two other former first-rounders — Kaapo Kakko (second overall in 2019) and Filip Chytil (21st in 2017). There’s little reason to believe that the GM is going to stop there, that the aggressive turning over of his roster will end by this summer – or that it will spare anyone he’s determined to deal away.
Drury is looking to change what looks like a questionable culture while simultaneously remaking the Rangers style of play. If Lafreniere suddenly catches fire and helps the Blueshirts reach the playoffs, he might be able to re-secure his spot as a supposed pillar of the club’s future. If he doesn’t, there’s little guarantee that his days in a Rangers sweater won’t be numbered.
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