The 2025-26 season was an extremely disappointing one for the New York Rangers, but that does not mean it was a complete disappointment for all of the franchise’s players. 2020 No. 1 overall pick Alexis Lafreniere enjoyed a bounce-back campaign, scoring 24 goals and tying his career-high of 57 points.
His performance last season, especially late in the campaign, suggests 2026-27 could be the former top prospect’s most significant opportunity yet to become the kind of star winger he was long projected to be.
Vincent Z. Mercogliano of The Athletic projects Lafreniere to begin the season on the Rangers’ first line, playing alongside No. 1 center Mika Zibanejad and prized offseason addition Pavel Dorofeyev.
The opportunity to play on a line with those two forwards is a significant one for Lafreniere.
He is no stranger to playing alongside Zibanejad, of course, the 33-year-old who is New York’s undisputed top center. The Swedish international led the Rangers in scoring with 34 goals and 78 points last season. But it’s the chance to play alongside Dorofeyev that could be even more important.
The 2019 third-round pick scored a career-high 37 goals and 64 points last season, and added an extremely impressive 12 goals in 22 games during the Vegas Golden Knights’ run to the Stanley Cup Final.
Dorofeyev is a sniper in every sense of the word, one of the game’s better pure goal scorers. Dating back to his days as a QMJHL star, Lafreniere has always been a natural playmaker, but hasn’t had the chance to play with a finisher like Dorofeyev at the pro level.
That will change. If he’s stapled to a line alongside Dorofeyev for a full season, the expectations for Lafreniere in terms of production should rise significantly.
An additional factor that could contribute to the likelihood of a career year from Lafreniere is the power play.
For almost all of his Rangers career thus far, Lafreniere has been relegated to playing on New York’s second unit power play. In essence, he hasn’t received much power play time at all, given how reliant the Rangers have been on their first unit in past campaigns.
Lafreniere’s second-unit time has often consisted of the final thirty seconds, or fewer, of power play opportunities after the first unit has exhausted all of its chances in the preceding 90 seconds. There hasn’t been much time to build chemistry or a rhythm when he’s been on the man advantage.
That already started to change in the second half of 2025-26. After New York traded franchise winger Artemi Panarin to the Los Angeles Kings, a spot was cleared for Lafreniere on the power play. He was no longer stuck on the sidelines. Panarin’s departure made him a focal point of the team’s first unit.
Lafreniere responded. In his final 27 games, he scored 14 goals and 28 points, leading the team in scoring in that span of time. He scored 15 points on the power play in 2025-26, and his previous career high was six.
Of course, a set of less than 30 games played during the final stretch of a lost Rangers season is not enough to say Lafreniere has truly taken his long-awaited developmental step forward, from quality middle-six winger to true top-six force. But his performances did suggest that step forward could be coming soon, and based on where he projects to begin the year in New York’s lineup, it would be no real surprise if 2026-27 is a career year for Lafreniere.
Photos courtesy of Danny Wild-Imagn Images