1/3/22 | Pierre LeBrun was asked on Insider Trading if the Rangers are looking to move on from Lafreniere and he said “not at the moment. My understanding is that certainly, predictably there were teams that checked in with the Rangers last week after his healthy scratch that made news around the league, but the reality is that the Rangers have told those teams ‘we still believe in this young man’ and the Rangers, my understanding is, have told the same to Lafreniere himself that they hope this is a good reset and they very much believe in his long-term potential, so for now he’s certainly a Ranger.”

12/30/22 : On the latest 32 Thoughts podcast, Elliotte Friedman spoke about Alexis Lafreniere and said:

• “I don’t think there needs to be a rush to judgment here in terms of anything happening quickly. I’ve covered a lot of Gerard Gallant over the years and kind of understand the way he thinks. First of all, Gallant is a guy who doesn’t like to keep people out of the lineup for a long time, so I’m not surprised he’d want to get someone like Sammy Blais back in so that he can play and that means that somebody has to come out.”

• “The second thing is, Gallant is a person who if a person isn’t giving him everything he needs on a consistent basis, he will sit them out. The key thing to recognize is, he was asked about Ben Harpur on Thursday and why Harpur stayed in and he kind of went into a longer answer, Libor Hajek, he wanted him to grab the spot, felt he didn’t do it. Zac Jones, he wanted him to grab the spot, felt he didn’t do it and that is why Harpur is in there, at least for the time being.”
• “He has to move someone out and saying, ‘look, I haven’t gotten everything I expect from this player.’ I don’t think it’s rush to mean that the Rangers are looking to trade him, I don’t think this means that anything is necessarily imminent, like he is on the block or they are sending the feelers out and things like that. This is the way that this coach handles his players. He’s very consistent over his career when it comes to things like this. He will sit players out or demote players in the lineup who he doesn’t think are competitive enough on a game-in, game-out basis.”
• “The other thing is, earlier in the year when the Rangers were struggling, one of the things I heard the Rangers indicated was that they weren’t looking to make moves as much as they were looking for people who were better last year in the playoffs to show more of that form in the regular season. And I still think that is kind of the way they look at it, rather than moving people out, they expect players to get to the level they showed last year and Lafreniere is definitely one of those people. Obviously, it’s a big story and as Ranger fans know, he was scratched last year late in the season and the Rangers liked the way that he responded out of it. That is kind of what this is intended to be, I get the sense of it, and I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions now in terms of this means the Rangers are trying to move him or he is being shopped or whatever the case is.”
• “Now, the one thing that always could happen is, does the player ever get to a point where he says ‘look, I’d like to go elsewhere.’ I don’t have any indication that is the case, that is always something that can change things, however, when it comes to what the Rangers have planned for him, I don’t think this is something where everyone should assume he is immediately going somewhere.”