It’s safe to say that Patrik Laine‘s career has not gone as planned since he was drafted with the second overall pick of the 2016 NHL Draft. In recent years, Laine’s career has been hindered by injuries, significantly diminishing the value he once had.
In his three full years with the Columbus Blue Jackets and two years with the Montreal Canadiens, Laine has appeared in 186 contests. It was enough for him to make some noise on the score sheet, but he still missed 55% of his potential games due to injuries.
Still, although availability is a skill in itself, it hasn’t been all bad for Laine. Over the past five years with the Blue Jackets and Canadiens, he has scored 74 goals and 151 points, averaging 17:08 of ice time per game.
Additionally, 39% of his goals came on the powerplay, showing he can still provide a team with some value when they have a man-advantage.
Furthermore, when measured against his peers from the 2016 NHL Draft, Laine is keeping pace. This isn’t an argument that he should have been drafted as high as he was, especially now that we have the advantage of hindsight.
However, it’s worth noting that Laine is currently tied for seventh in scoring among his draft class, just a few points behind Pierre-Luc Dubois, the player he was traded for earlier in his career.
Stats
2025-26: 5 GP, 0 G, 1 A, 1 PT, -3, 2 PIMS, 6 shots, 12:36 ATOI, 49.1 CF%
Career: 537 GP, 224 G, 198 A, 422 PTS, -75, 201 PIMS, 1,512 shots, 17:28 ATOI, 54.6 CF%
Potential Suitors
Given what he brings to the table, Laine’s market is isolated to teams that need desperate help on the powerplay. Other than that, because of his defensive shortcomings, Laine will largely play a bottom-six role on whichever team he lands with so that they can afford to shelter him at even strength.
Looking at the 2025-26 season, the Philadelphia Flyers, Calgary Flames, New York Islanders, Chicago Blackhawks, and Los Angeles Kings finished with the worst power plays in the league, in that order. The Flyers and Blackhawks are likely to focus on internal development, leaving the Flames, Islanders, and Kings as the most probable teams to express interest, if any.
A few weeks ago, Stefen Rosner of The Elmonters connected the Islanders to Laine earlier in the summer. Still, they were unwilling to do anything more than a professional tryout contract.
Projected Contract
In the Islanders’ defense, given the two major injuries Laine has faced over the past three years, a PTO doesn’t seem unreasonable. Laine remains relatively young and can point to his 20-goal campaign only two years ago, but teams will be hard-pressed to commit to anything concrete before seeing that he has fully recovered.
Playing out a hypothetical scenario in which Laine signs a PTO for training camp and makes the team, he’s not likely to command a high dollar amount. Still, he can make up for that in bonuses.
The only way players can include performance bonuses in their contract is if they’re signing their entry-level contract, are 35 years or older, or are a veteran of 400 or more games, and are coming off a season in which they spent 100 or more days on the injured reserve. Laine would fall into the latter camp.
Any team that eventually signs Laine will want to minimize their risk as much as possible. Still, on the off chance that he has a fully healthy 2026-27 season, and can get back to his scoring ways, the team signing him won’t be kicking themselves for rewarding him either.
Laine will likely sign a minimum league contract with additional bonuses for games played and goals scored.
Photo courtesy of Timothy T. Ludwig-Imagn Images.