From Second Overall to Last Chance: The Patrik Laine Story

The Bleu-Blanc-et-Rouge

The reign of Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton has been punctuated by one simple philosophy: buy low. The first big acquisition was Kirby Dach, who, outside of tearing his ACL and MCL in the first game of last season, has been a runaway success.

The next year was Alex Newhook from the Colorado Avalanche. While Newhook wasn't the same success as Dach, he still had a solid year. He broke his career highs in goals and points, but also missed almost 30 games due to injury.

This year, the man of the hour is Patrik Laine. He has the highest draft pedigree of the players mentioned above, is older and further into his development, but also has much more success than Dach or Newhook.

Even those years in Columbus were still pretty good. If he kept up his pace in his first full year in Columbus, he would have scored 38 goals and 82 points, which is still pretty good. That would be far and away better than any player the Canadiens had that year. Matter of fact, just transplanting his stats onto the 2021-22 Canadiens, he would lead the team in goals and be second in points in much fewer games.

Plus, Laine will likely have much better linemates in Montreal. Laine played with a rotating cast of linemates, some good, but most are a little bit lacking.

In 2022-23, Laine played some time early in the season with Johnny Gaudreau, who is a very good hockey player, but that playing time almost disappeared later in the year. The most common linemates in 2022-23 were Jack Roslovic, Kent Johnson, Boone Jenner and Kirill Marchenko.

Johnson and Marchenko are still very young and growing as players, where Jenner and Roslovic are fine, but not the most complimentary to a skilled sniper like Laine. Similar story with what little he played in 2023-24. Laine played with rookie Adam Fantilli, Alexandre Texier, Dmitri Voronkov, Boone Jenner and Yegor Chinakhov. All young, developing players (minus Jenner).

When Laine starts the season with the Canadiens, he will have really good linemates, like Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky, Kirby Dach and/or Alex Newhook. These are all better players right now compared to those Blue Jackets players, and will compliment Laine's skills better.

So, is this Laine's last chance? Likely not really. But it might be his last really good shot at finding footing in the league.

He is good enough to always have a spot somewhere, even if its just as a roster spot on teams like Chicago or Utah trying to reach the cap floor, or mentors for their young players, but this feels like the last hope in keeping his career away from being a rental gun-for-hire.

Time will tell if this year Laine beats the allegations and has a fantastic season with the Habs or not. But it will be fun to watch either way.