{"id":748450,"date":"2026-06-20T01:15:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T01:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/748450\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T01:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T01:15:10","slug":"insider-links-big-market-legit-suitor-to-ufa-patrik-laine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/748450\/","title":{"rendered":"Insider Links Big Market, Legit Suitor To UFA Patrik Laine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Social Media Feature Preview\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GdPXeMOWQAAnKD9.jpeg\"\/>The Patrik Laine free agency might have more juice to it than may believe. The guy does have seven 20-goal seasons in his 10-year career. This year was a write-off, with only five games played in October before he went down to injury and never returned to the Montreal Canadiens lineup.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Could Patrik Laine take his game to Los Angeles? I believe that&#8217;s a spot he&#8217;d have interest in, and the Kings were in talks to acquire him from Montreal ahead of the trade deadline. Picking him up on a low AAV, bonus-laden deal could work for both parties.<\/p>\n<p>Laine is coming off an $8.7 million cap hit on his expired four-year contract. He won&#8217;t come anywhere close to that this time around. AFP Analytics projects the Finnish forward to land only an $850,000 AAV on a one-year deal. After missing nearly the entire season in two of the last three years, and playing just 52 games for Montreal in the 2024-25 season, Laine will have to take a &#8216;prove it&#8217; deal of this kind to show that he can stay healthy and help a team for a full season before he gets his paycheck back up into the millions.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In those 52 games, however, last season, he did find the net 20 times. He&#8217;s always maintained a strong shooting percentage, so there&#8217;s a chance he could still help a team starving for offense.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s where the Kings come in.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>LA finished fourth from the bottom in the NHL in goals per game this past season, and now they&#8217;ve lost Anze Kopitar to retirement as well. They&#8217;ll have Artemi Panarin for a full season, but more is needed. Perhaps Pagnotta&#8217;s suggestion gains some traction.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Patrik Laine free agency might have more juice to it than may believe. The guy does have&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-748450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}