Laine scored 20 goals for the Canadiens in 2024-25 but did not play after Oct. 16 this season after he was sidelined by a core muscle injury that required surgery. The 28-year-old had one assist in five games and did not play in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, when he said he was healthy for Montreal\u2019s run to the Eastern Conference Final, where it lost to the Carolina Hurricanes in five games.<\/p>\n
He practiced regularly late in the season and through the playoffs and said he was been medically cleared to return.\u00a0Laine can become an unrestricted free agent July 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one of those things; I\u2019ll just leave it at that,\u201d\u00a0Laine said. \u201cI kind of figured early on that I probably wasn\u2019t going to be playing since I\u2019ve been out for four or five months and guys are battling for a playoff spot and all the guys were playing great. So, I kind of figured that I probably won\u2019t be playing, but I\u2019ll take this time to support the guys and work hard and if the call comes, it comes. And if it doesn\u2019t, then I\u2019ll still keep working. It\u2019s only going to help me in the future when you work hard every day, and that\u2019s kind of how I saw it this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just excited about where the wind takes me next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The No. 2 pick by the Winnipeg Jets at the 2016\u00a0NHL Draft, Laine has 422 points (224 goals, 198 assists) in 537 games with the Jets, Columbus Blue Jackets and Canadiens. He scored an NHL career-high 44 goals with Winnipeg in his second NHL season (2017-18).<\/p>\n
\u201c(Laine) was so far behind because he hadn\u2019t been playing, and then we were in a situation where we absolutely had to win,\u201d general manager Kent Hughes said. \u201cSo, that was a difficult situation, but he was an incredible teammate — not just showing up for practice, but all the events around the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can only say that he was extraordinary as a person, and I would not hesitate to give\u00a0Patrik Laine a good reference.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Laine scored 20 goals for the Canadiens in 2024-25 but did not play after Oct. 16 this season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-709293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}