It was indeed the most compelling performance of Alexis Lafreniere’s career and there’s not even a close second. This was superstar stuff from No. 13 on Saturday night in Raleigh, N.C.
This was first-overall stuff that not even a Game 4 defeat that prevented a second-round sweep of the Hurricanes could camouflage, it was that much of a dominant showing. There was no one close to him.
Lafreniere competed, he danced, he played with finesse, he played with snarl. He went to the net. He won the 50-50’s. He shot the puck. He drove the net. He lifted the Rangers into a 3-3 tie early in the third period with a Gretzky-esque bank shot off the goaltender from below the goal line. He sparred with Sebastian Aho. On a night when linemates Artemi Panarin and Vincent Trocheck had their weakest games of the tournament, Lafreniere was fierce.
“I thought he could have had three or four goals,” head coach Peter Laviolette said of the winger who has scored four goals in the last three games. “There were things we could have done to tighten up, but we also had looks and it seemed like it was on his stick and you knew it was coming.
“I bumped him on the bench, saying, ‘It’s coming.’ And so it’s nice to see him continue to take steps in the playoffs and continue to be a difference-maker and I thought he was [in Game 4]. I don’t think he was rewarded offensively the way he maybe should have been after [creating so many chances.]”
This is about now, of course. It is about Monday’s potential clincher at the Garden. It is about navigating the course from seven victories to the 16 required to lift the Cup. The Rangers will have to be far sharper to close it out than they were in Saturday’s 4-3 defeat. Essentially every one of their marquee players needs to better. They know that.
But Lafreniere’s emergence throughout the season — his first season as a top-six winger — and his play in the tournament heralds that something special is coming down the road. Of course, that’s what everyone expected from the moment the Rangers won the 2020 draft lottery with their odds at 2.5 percent and moved up to select the lad from Saint-Eustache, Quebec, who had long since separated himself from the field.
But what a long, strange trip it has been from there to here.
That was the summer of the pandemic. Lafreniere was at home watching the virtual lottery on TV. He was at home watching the virtual draft on TV. His rookie season that started the middle of January consisted of 56 games, predominantly with between zero and a couple of thousand fans in the building. He had an accelerated 10-day training camp. There were no exhibition games.
Chris Kreider and Artemi Panarin were ahead of him on the depth chart at left wing. For one rationalization of another, the team stacked their wings, leaving the first-overall pick third on the depth chart. Several attempts to shift either Lafreniere or Kreider never lasted more than a couple of weeks. Lafreniere could not get top-six time that just about always accrues to a first-overall. There were no vacancies on the first power-play unit.
David Quinn, a believer in tough love, was behind the bench for Lafreniere’s rookie season, Gerard Gallant for the next two. There always seemed something a bit off in the relationship between Lafreniere and Gallant. The coach talked about Lafreniere more critically than any other player. He said that Lafreniere looked uncomfortable on the right even though the player said otherwise.
Laviolette replaced Gallant, moved Lafreniere into a top-six spot on the right, and the player had a training camp from hell. Don’t let anyone tell you that the hierarchy was not concerned. I wrote what I know is regarded as a quite critical column at the end of camp but I also said that, regardless, Laviolette should give Lafreniere a top-six spot and tell him to just go out and play without looking over his shoulder.
No. 13 scored the first goal of the season in Buffalo on Oct. 12, never looked over his shoulder and never looked back, finishing with 28 goals, 19 at five-on-five while playing off of Panarin and Trocheck on a line that led the NHL in even-strength goals.
By the way, can I just throw this in here for a second: Last summer, GM Chris Drury was able to sign restricted free agents Lafreniere and K’Andre Miller to contracts for a total of $6.197 million per year. Each guy is going to get at least that alone per year when they’re up again in 2025. Another reason to focus on now.
The Rangers get a second chance at advancing to the conference finals with this Game 5 and they would very much prefer not to need a third. They’re going to need their best effort of the playoffs. They’re going to need the best players to be their best players.
They are going to need Lafreniere to be himself.
