Draft Retrospective: Is Alexis Lafrenière fulfilling his draft-year expectations?

For a time, Alexis Lafrenière looked like a rare first overall miss. 

Stuck in the Rangers’ bottom-six, his development flatlined. He scored at half-a-point per game pace, rarely featured on the highlight reel, and looked nowhere close to reaching our draft year projections. 

We wrote many different articles exploring the reasons for his lack of success in his early NHL years. We broke down his low ice-time, lack of puck touches and reduced high quality offensive opportunities. We studied the challenges he was facing in the NHL and how he could overcome them.  

In the end, it was only a matter of patience. As the adage goes, it takes five years to evaluate the selection of a prospect. Lafrenière broke out right on cue.

After producing close to a point per game since the end of last season, the