Hockey

“Patrik Laine is sure to end up being a baboon”
Félix Forget
“Patrik Laine is sure to end up being a baboon”
Credit: Getty Images

Patrik Laine is in his second season with the Canadiens. The forward, acquired in the summer of 2024 to add some offensive punch to the lineup, showed off his scoring skills last year… but the overall quality of his game was the talk of the town for not so good reasons.He seriously, seriously struggled at 5-on-5.All of which means that this year, Laine is placed in rather different conditions. The Finn finds himself on the wing of the 4th line… and, more importantly, he's on the second powerplay wave (unlike last year, when he was on the first). This was the topic of discussion on the most recent episode of the Exit the Zone podcast… and in the eyes of Richard Labbé, Alexandre Pratt and Stéphane Waite, it's inevitable that all this will lead to Laine “babooning”.

They talk about this at around the 17-minute mark of the episode.

And in their eyes, the reason is quite simple: Laine is at the end of his contract and is currently trying to store around for a new one. For a player whose bread and butter is scoring goals, he's not exactly placed in a position that brings out his skills.The second powerplay wave hardly plays at all, after all: the first is on the ice for almost the entire two minutes, so the second often gets a single (and very short) opportunity to do some damage. We're not exactly talking about winning conditions for Laine. That said, it's worth remembering that Martin St-Louis doesn't coach to ensure that Laine gets a new contract: he's there to ensure that his club wins games. And right now, it's hard to argue that Laine deserves more playing time.He's not bad, of course, but he doesn't particularly stand out, which is what other guys ahead of him in the pecking order are doing right now. We can think of Zachary Bolduc, for example, who “stole” his place on the first wave… and who is playing some very big hockey.We'll have to see how all this develops over the coming weeks and months, but it will be interesting to see if Laine eventually starts complaining about his role. Because we know he's capable of speaking his mind in front of the media.

'Overtime'

– A first game with the Bruins for Jordan Harris tonight.

– Jacques Lemaire honored by the Wild.

–

Zayne Parekh

–

– Interesting.

– The Blue Jays' opponents are in a precarious situation.

facebook icon Share twitter icon Tweet linkedin icon Share
Copied!