This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Alexis Lafrenière

First overall in 2020, and twenty-eight goals in the fourth season, which is when it finally arrived.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2020-21	NYR	56	12	9	21	-7	8	0	0	4	67	17.9	13:53
2021-22	NYR	79	19	12	31	+2	37	0	0	4	110	17.3	13:59
2022-23	NYR	81	16	23	39	+10	33	3	0	2	135	11.8	15:13
2023-24	NYR	82	28	29	57	+2	40	2	0	5	217	12.9	17:16
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	298	75	73	148	+7	118	5	0	15	529	14.2	15:12

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

All 82 games, 28 goals and 29 assists for 57 points, 2 on the power play, 5 game-winners, 40 penalty minutes, 17:16 a night and plus-2. He took 55.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,262 minutes, the 91st percentile, and his ice went 69-62 against an expectation of 66.05-52.37.

Three goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and ten more conceded than they called for. Twenty-eight goals and a 91st-percentile chance share, after 148 points in his first four seasons combined.

The Finesse Game

319 attempts at a median of 24 feet with 41 per cent from inside 20, 217 on goal, converted at 12.9 per cent against a career 14.18.

73 career assists in 298 games. He gets to the middle now, which he did not at 20, and the shot is heavier than the draft scouting suggested. Two power-play goals against twenty-eight in total says where the ice has been.

The Physical Game

He is 6-2 and 191 and wins the wall and protects the puck below the goal line.

118 career penalty minutes in 298 games is a low rate. He forechecks hard and does not retaliate, and the physical half of his game arrived at the same time the goals did.

The Intangibles

First overall in 2020 out of St-Eustache, four seasons, and 148 points in 298 games, all of it for one organisation.

He is 23 and had 21, 31, 39 and 57 points in his four seasons. First overall picks who take four years are written off by everybody except the club that drafted them, and this one has just taken a 91st-percentile chance share on a first-place team.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
55.8% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 47.0% for his club in the minutes he sat: +8.8, 97th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
15:23 a game at five-on-five, 95th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
73% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He is 6-2 and 191 and wins the wall and protects the puck below the goal line.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He is 6-2 and 191 and wins the wall and protects the puck below the goal line.”
forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“He forechecks hard and does not retaliate, and the physical half of his game arrived at the same time the goals did.”
retaliateshe lacks it· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“He forechecks hard and does not retaliate, and the physical half of his game arrived at the same time the goals did.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,262 minutes

Expected goals: 55.8%; 91st pct
Shot attempts: 55.5%; 91st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 69 for, 62 against. Expected: 66.0 and 52.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

72nd

Numbers

91st

The two rank him within 19 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 74 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.8 mph; 79th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.77 a game
Distance: 2.86 miles a game
Hardest shot: 84.8 mph; 38th pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 1262 minutes at five-on-five

Artemi Panarin83%
Vincent Trocheck75%
Filip Chytil10%

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2023-24

The club: NYR took 50.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.8% — 5.7 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,262 minutes at five-on-five — 87th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Artemi Panarin	57.3%	46.2%	55.8%
Vincent Trocheck	56.6%	53.3%	49.3%
K'Andre Miller	54.5%	56.4%	45.6%

57.3% together, 46.2% for him apart and 55.8% for Panarin apart. He was worse away from Panarin, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Panarin did.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

319 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 28 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 41% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.