The Patrik Laine Story
The 2016 draft and the entire lead-up to the day was an absolute banger. Looking back, it is a fantastic draft, but at the time, the eyes of the league were focused on just two players. The centre from the desert in Auston Matthews, and the Finnish sniper Patrik Laine.
Laine was a legitimate threat to Matthews 1st overall status, but ultimately the Toronto Maple Leafs made the right decision, and went with the centre and their future captain.
But for the first few years it was a bit touch-and-go. Their rookie seasons saw Laine and Matthews go toe-to-toe, with Laine scoring 36 goals to Matthews 40, but Matthews played more games. And then Laine outscored Matthews in their sophomore seasons 44 to 34.
Plus there was this beautiful course of events. In overtime, Matthews has a breakaway and is stopped, only for Laine to score the game-winner immediately after.
If you are keeping track, if Laine scored those 44 goals in Montreal, it would be the most goals in one season since Stephane Richer all the way back in 1989-90.
And while Laine would never reach those heights again, he still put up respectable numbers. But after a few years, a rift grew between the player and team, and Laine was eventually traded to the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Now, numbers-wise, Laine did well in Columbus. After a rocky first season, Laine scored at a point-per-game pace in his next two seasons with the team. Sure, he never scored 30 goals, but he had 30 assists in each season on a team that was not the best offensively.
But part of the problem was that Laine never managed to play a full season. He played 56 and 55 games in his first two full seasons for the Blue Jackets. But when he did play, he put up numbers.
But 2023-24 happened and Laine only played 18 games. I am not going to talk about all the rumors and Laine's mental health, mostly because I think that is too personal and not something for people to speculate and talk about.
But the truth was, Laine was not going to return to Columbus. And the Montreal Canadiens just got a new regime, and their philosophy is to buy low and sell high. And there wasn't someone you could buy lower than Patrik Laine in 2024.
And naturally, nothing comes easy, and Laine was injured in the preseason, which luckily was pretty minor all things considered, but kept the sniper out until December. But then Laine arrived in a big way.
Laine scored in his first two games, and then added another in his fourth game. And then against Buffalo in his 7th game as a Montreal Canadien, Laine scored a hat-trick, followed by two goals in two games in a back-to-back against the Detroit Red Wings.
In the 39 games that Patrik Laine has played for the Montreal Canadiens, he has scored 17 goals and 30 points. Which is a blistering pace.
We can do some simple math to see what this goal-scoring pace would look like over a full 82 game season. The pace that Laine is scoring at this season would be about 36 goals in a season. That would top every single Montreal Canadiens goal scoring season since Max Pacioretty scored 37 goals in 2014-15, exactly a decade ago.
This is while coming off a basically lost year in 2023-24, and a knee injury from the preseason. It's hard to overstate how great Laine has been offensively for the Montreal Canadiens.