If the New York Rangers are ever going to get the elite scorer they imagined when selecting Alexis Lafreniere first overall in the 2020 NHL Draft, the 24-year-old must start thinking like one again.
There are plenty of people who are convinced that Lafreniere will never become a dynamic offensive player, that his 419 NHL games are a large enough sample size to determine that the winger is what he is. That he’ll never put up big numbers, and wherever his career takes him, his team must accept that he’s a strong possession and scoring-chance driver, but not the franchise forward the Rangers expected.