New York Rangers rising star Alexis Lafreniere is looking to build on his best NHL season heading into 2024-25. Primed to smash his career-highs of 28 goals and 57 points from a year ago, new NHL.com Fantasy Hockey rankings have Lafreniere ranked No. 116 in their Top 200 list of players.
Lafreniere joins a group of seven Rangers who made the list, along with Artemi Panarin, Igor Shesterkin, Chris Kreider, Vincent Trocheck, Adam Fox, and Mika Zibanejad.
Surprisingly, Lafreniere, the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NHL Draft, is ranked three spots behind Macklin Celebrini, this year’s first-overall pick, by the NHL.com Fantasy Hockey staff.
It is important to note that in standard Fantasy Hockey, points are earned for goals, assists, plus/minus, power-play points, shots on goal, and hits. While Celebrini should find how way consistently on to the score sheet, the 18-year-old may have a hard time staying on the positive end of the plus/minus category. Don’t expect very many hits, either.
Even though Celebrini is set to earn loads of ice time and opportunity, including on the power play, he is joining a San Jose Sharks team that bottomed out in the NHL last season with just 47 points. They scored 180 goals, second fewest in the NHL. This is a team in a massive rebuild and Celebrini is not going to get a whole lot of help offensively.
Down the road, it’s fair to say Celebrini projects to be a more dynamic offensive player than Lafreniere. But right now, from a Fantasy Hockey point of view, it’d appear that Lafreniere is the safer bet this season.
Rangers’ Alexis Lafreniere could be steal in NHL Fantasy Hockey
Looking at Lafreniere, he registered 57 points last season, playing on one of the top lines in the League with Panarin and Trocheck. Additionally, the 22-year-old had 217 shots on goal, 75 hits, and was plus-two. If he continues to grow and develop, improvements are expected in nearly all of these categories. And his value will spike even more if he gets more run on the power play.
Playing on a successful team like the Rangers, Lafreniere should already be given an edge over Celebrini. Combining that with the fact that he is playing alongside two superstar veterans and has the potential to really break out this season after a starring run in the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs makes the decision to rank him lower than Celebrini a bit of a head scratcher.
There is no denying that Celebrini has elite talent. However, considering all the categories that make up Fantasy hockey points, it is hard to see him out-performing Lafreniere in 2024-25.
