…the Blue Jackets no longer have to shape their style of play around Laine’s unicorn-like skill set. That’ll be a relief for many.
The best part of the deal for Columbus — and the part that few thought Waddell could achieve, especially at this late date in the offseason — is that the Blue Jackets aren’t retaining any portion of Laine’s massive contract, which pays him $8.7 million this season and next.
— Aaron Portzline, The Athletic
Based on descriptions like that, one could be forgiven for thinking that Patrik Laine arrives in Montreal as glorified dead weight, simply here to whittle away the days until the end of his current contract at the end of the 2025-26 season. However, that is not what the Canadiens believe. As Arpon Basu puts it:
Laine, on the other hand, is being looked upon as a player who can help the Canadiens take a step in their progression. There is an obvious hole on their second line that Laine fills. There is an obvious hole on their second power-play unit that Laine fills. There is an obvious need for more pure goal-scoring ability that Laine fills. And all of those filled holes could get the Canadiens closer to their stated goal for the 2024-25 season, which is to compete for a playoff spot, to be in the mix, as Hughes repeated Monday.
— Arpon Basu, The Athletic
Wanting something, of course, is different than having it happen, and no one will argue that Laine dons the Sainte Flanelle after the worst seasons of his career. That said, no one will likewise argue that Laine brings new dimensions and skills to the Canadiens, dimensions and skills that are difficult to find in other players. This is, after all, a player who scored 36 and 44 goals in his first two NHL campaigns in a not-too-distant past.
So how can the Canadiens return Laine to that form? Looking at that past may yield the answers.
Laine’s track record
As of the conclusion of the 2023-24 NHL season, Laine has scored 106 NHL goals at five-on-five. Seventy-two were tallied over 4201.5 minutes wearing the colours of the Winnipeg Jets, for a per-60-minutes rate of 1.03. Thirty-four were registered over 2457.0 minutes in the sweater of the Columbus Blue Jackets, for a rate of 0.83 per 60 minutes — a 19% decline.
The initial instinct may be to say that this decline can be attributed to the Jackets simply generating less offence than the Jets. Certainly, since Laine has entered the league, Manitoba’s capital has consistently hosted a better hockey club than Ohio’s. However, his on-ice metrics show a different story. While the Finnish forward was on the playing surface, the Jets, as a team, generated an average of 54.0 shot attempts and 28.9 shots on goal. The Blue Jackets, in similar circumstances, produced … a virtually identical 53.7 shot attempts and 29.5 shots on goal.
What does differ though is Laine’s personal role in these two offences. In Winnipeg, the Tampere-native personally accounted for 27% or 28% of all of the shots on goal taken at five-on-five with him on the ice (“shot share”). This remained consistent across the four full seasons he spent along the banks of the Red River. By contrast, he topped out at 24.1% in Columbus, averaging a shot share of merely 21.6% across his four campaigns in the shadow of the cannon.
A 23% decline in shot share, a 21% decline in shots per 60 minutes, and a 19% decline in goals per 60. It all lines up rather neatly.
Winnipeg vs. Columbus
Numbers are created by an on-ice product, and not the other way around. They cannot explain what Laine was doing with the Blue Jackets, only indicate that whatever it was happened to be less effective than what he was doing in Winnipeg.
So what happened to him in Columbus?
While his reputation as a goal-scorer largely centres on his shot, the Finn entered the league as a rather multifaceted player. Jack Han performed an in-depth analysis of Laine’s Winnipeg tenure back in September, 2020 when rumours of his departure from the Forks first began to swirl. He noted that Laine’s goals could be grouped into three main sources:
- a power-play one-timer (a.k.a. the Ovechkin)
- five-on-five rush scoring
- five-on-five in-zone scoring
Han makes sure to note that “once [Winnipeg] sets up in the offensive zone, Laine does not go to the front of the net for tips and rebounds. Instead he meanders around the [offensive zone] without the puck, waiting for a linemate to find a seam to the left flank or in the high slot. Then he pounces to score with a quick release”. This is reflected in his heat maps from that time, which show a clustering around and within the left faceoff circle, but also goals from the right side, low slot, and high slot.
Han’s take-home message is that Laine’s dip in production from a 45-goal-per-season pace to a 30-goal-per-season pace is largely due to factors outside of his control; that the forward’s “production is down mostly in situations where he requires others to get the puck to him.” He urged Laine’s coaches, whether in Winnipeg or elsewhere, to stay the course and not force the Finn to dramatically change his style of play, stand in front of the net, or concentrate on defence.
Four years later, if we look at Laine’s heat maps from his Columbus tenure, his scoring from the right side and high slot have largely vanished. Instead of the multifaceted rover drafted second overall in 2016, the Blue Jackets’ version was a one-dimensional one-timer machine. This predictability gave the opposition a way to neutralize his shot, forcing him to either play decoy or pass off to secondary and tertiary weapons. In 2022-23, Laine had more primary assists on the late Johnny Gaudreau’s goals than the other way around, probably not what Columbus had envisioned when Laine was acquired.
Finding the right fit
Circling back to the original question: how can the Canadiens get Laine to be the multifaceted player that he once was? In 2020, Han recommended putting him with “two strong transition players who like playing in space and creating passing combinations. MacKinnon-Landeskog, Barzal-Eberle, Danault-Gallagher, so on and so forth.” Who might fit that bill on the 2024-25 squad?
Nick Suzuki
In a vacuum, the Canadiens’ captain and top centre is probably the best fit for Laine. Suzuki’s strong 200-foot game, adept vision and distribution, and excellent hockey sense sparks comparisons to Sebastian Aho, who formed one of the most potent U20 lines with Laine and Jesse Puljujärvi back in 2016. Suzuki, as a pass-first centre, is also well-suited for giving Laine the setups and puck touches that he needs to excel.
The evidence for Suzuki’s fit comes from his chemistry with Cole Caufield, a player very much in the same mould as Laine. While some may argue that Laine’s talent and ceiling exceeds Caufield’s, it would be bad form to immediately place an external talent ahead of a home-grown one without a single second of on-ice competition for the spot. If Laine is going to line up next to Suzuki, he’ll need to earn it first.
Alex Newhook
With Suzuki off the table (for now), the spotlight moves to Kirby Dach. Dach simply does not have enough of a body of work as a centre for the Canadiens to make an assessment. However, Dach’s injury last season opened the door for Alex Newhook to play prominent minutes as a centre. The Newfoundlander’s work as a distributor and facilitator between Brendan Gallagher and Joel Armia was admirable. In particular, Newhook showed flexibility in adopting a more cycle-heavy style as opposed to the run-and-gun transition game that he experienced with the Colorado Avalanche.
Who would Laine replace on that trio? Here, Armia’s offensive-zone play probably offers more of the versatility that Laine’s game feeds off rather than Gallagher’s net-front presence. Armia may be best known as a grinder or puck-cycler, but the other Finnish forward on Montreal’s roster has a 9.8% shooting percentage during his time in the Tricolore. He also (somehow) led the team in goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five last season. That said, the Armia-Newhook-Gallagher line largely operated below the hash marks via puck cycling, whereas Laine’s style is better suited to players who can manoeuvre the puck higher up in the offensive zone. It remains to be seen whether Armia and Newhook can adapt accordingly.
Juraj Slafkovský
Speaking of Armia, Juraj Slafkovský does everything Armia can do (and more), but better. Slafkovský’s board-play and forecheck during the second half of the season improved by leaps and bounds, his ability to shield the puck is exceptional, and he is showing glimpses of elite vision. Slafkovský also gives Laine the perfect foil, as teams will constantly have to decide which one to overcommit to at the risk of leaving the other open while the two are zig-zagging and criss-crossing through the offensive zone. However, once again, barring Dach playing himself into the role at some point this year, a Laine-Slafkovský duo would have to be centred by Nick Suzuki — which creates other issues up and down the lineup.
Jake Evans, Christian Dvorak, Josh Anderson, and Brendan Gallagher
While discussing possibilities that would help open up Laine’s game, it’s also necessary to discuss who the coaches should refrain from playing with their new acquisition. Jake Evans and Christian Dvorak are expected to shoulder most of the defensive burden in 2024-25, as they did in 2023-24. Putting Laine in such a position would be the antithesis of playing to the Finn’s strengths. Montreal is better off trying to outscore the opposition with Laine on the ice rather than trying to outdefend them.
Alternatively, while Josh Anderson and Brendan Gallagher represent potential offensive threats, neither offers the multidimensionality to synergize effectively with where the Canadiens are trying to bring Laine’s game. Anderson brings his speed and shot, but his distribution and positioning leaves much to be desired — and limits Anderson’s usefulness away from a puck that should, more often than not, be Laine’s to shoot.
On the other hand, Gallagher’s propensity to beeline toward the netfront forces the rest of the team to bring the play and puck to him — lest they play four-on-five — rather than the other way around. That said, Martin St-Louis and the Canadiens’ braintrust have been working since their hiring to add more dimensions to the Canadiens’ forward corps, including Gallagher and Anderson. The two could yet bring something new to the table.
Patience
The thing is, despite ostensibly being the new face in town and the big off-season acquisition, Laine should be under no pressure from the coaching staff to find his footing. After all, he is in the exact same boat as Dach, looking to reintegrate himself into the lineup after a lost season, or Joshua Roy, looking to show that last season was no fluke. He’s in the same boat as Anderson, Gallagher, and Dvorak, trying to prove that they can be part of the team’s long-term future. The same boat as Suzuki, Caufield, and Slafkovský, trying to take the next step and join the league’s elite.
The Canadiens’ forward corps, as it has been for the last two years, is still very much in a state of flux. The coaching staff will, for at least the first half of the season, try various combinations to see what works and what does not. As such, there is no need to break out the pitchforks if Laine does not excel over the first 10, 20, or even 30 games. The important thing is whether or not the coaching and management staffs recognize and understand what environment is needed to maximize Laine’s talents. Given that he has not forgotten how to play hockey, there is no reason that they should not be rewarded if they can create that environment.
