2025 Kings Seasons In Review – Alex Laferriere

Moving from the defensemen to the forwards, we’ll start things off with pending restricted free agent Alex Laferriere. Laferriere completed his second full season with the Kings in 2024-25, taking a pretty sizeable step forward after a promising rookie campaign in 2023-24. More on Laferriere’s season below to kick off the forward group.

Alex Laferriere
LAK Statline – 77 games played, 19 goals, 23 assists, +22 rating, 20 penalty minutes
LAK Playoff Statline – 6 games played, 0 goals, 3 assists, +1 rating, 2 penalty minutes
NHL Possession Metrics (Relative To Kings) – CF% – 55.4% (+3.1%), SCF% – 56.1% (+3.8%), HDCF% – 57.5% (+3.0%)

Laferriere came into the season with a ton of upside, off a rookie campaign that was pretty exciting. He certainly took a step forward overall. He set career highs across the board offensively, powered by a really strong start to the season in particular. While he cooled off from a production standpoint, Laferriere made an impact on most nights over the course of 82 games.

Trending Up – Across the board, Laferriere was better offensively this season than he was last season. If you like raw production, he nearly doubled his numbers across the board, as he finished one goal shy of the 20-goal mark, while exceeding 40 points for the first time. If you like per/60 instead, he went from 1.2 to 2.0 in terms of 5-on-5 points per/60. If you like quality chances, Laferriere ranked seventh in the NHL in individual scoring chances per/60 among the 378 forwards with at least 500 minutes played at 5-on-5. In terms of generating chances, Laferriere was very good and that’s an area of his game that seems likely to remain, year-over-year.

While I’ll get to his slump a bit further down, the timing of Laferriere’s early-season production was extremely important. Several Kings forwards struggled to produce early in the season but Laferriere was not one of those players. He scored 12 goals in his first 27 games played, which had the conversation centered around whether he might score 30 goals for the first time in his career. 10 of those 12 goals came at 5-on-5, which tied Laferriere for fifth in the NHL during that span. Early in the season, Laferriere joined Anze Kopitar and Adrian Kempe in driving the team’s offensive production, which helped keep the team afloat as other players did not score as much as they were projected to early in the season. It was very important to have that early production, even if it wasn’t maintained all season.

One thing that I admired about Laferriere’s season was that during the times when he struggled to produce offensively, he was still impacting games. During October and November, Laferriere ranked second on the Kings in scoring chances and high-danger chances on a per/60 basis. From December through March? He ranked second in scoring chances and third in high-danger chances and his numbers were actually better. The differences came with a 3.3 shooting percentage, which was unsustainably low, and the fact that he collected a point on just 46.2 percent of the goals he was on the ice for in that span, which was again just ridiculously low. The steadiness of his underlying metrics is extremely encouraging and just about everyone who was asked maintained that Laferriere was playing well, despite not scoring. I was in that camp and now, upon reflection, I remain impressed with his contributions, despite the lack of goals during the middle of the season. Chances created are a much better indicator of what’s to come and Laferriere was among the best Kings in that department.

Trending Down – For all of what is written above remains a simple fact – from December through March, Laferriere only scored five goals. Just three of those goals came at 5-on-5 and he was tied for tenth in that category with Andrei Kuzmenko, who only played in 13 games. Laferriere did miss five games in that stretch due to injury but it was certainly a long spell for him that he was unable to replicate his production from early in the season. For a player in a middle-six role, on a team that is always looking for more goalscoring, those are not encouraging figures. A shooting percentage of 3.3% was extremely low and it led to three actual goals on 11 expected goals in 5-on-5 situations. As I said above, I thought Laferriere was still an impactful player in that stretch, but the goals are the goals. And the goals weren’t there for long stretches of play.

I’d be interested to hear what other people thought of Laferriere’s playoff performance. As I think back to the series against Edmonton and identify, for discussion’s sake, my three best and worst players, I wouldn’t have Laferriere on either list. I didn’t think he was bad and his underlying numbers ranked around where they did in the regular season, as a strong chance creator, but I also didn’t think he was an impact player by any stretch in that series. He was one of three Kings forwards with three-or-more assists at even strength but was also the only Top-9 forward without a goal in the series. I don’t know. I think I was just left wanting more in that series, even if I thought Laferriere’s overall play was down the middle fine. To get over the first-round hump, though, the Kings need more than just down the middle fine from more players at that time of the year, so I put Laferriere in that bucket.

2025-26 Status – Laferriere is the team’s most important restricted free agent this summer. I don’t have a sense right now about which route he and the Kings will look to go with regards to a potential contract extension, just that I know he is thought of very highly here. With a rising cap number and Laferriere’s potential, I could see a shorter-term contract making sense for both sides, somewhere in the $3 million (+) range, which sets up a longer-term extension with a larger salary cap. I also believe that Laferriere has earned that long-term commitment now if both sides want that, which would see the cap number rise up front, but potentially cost him some money on the backend. The Kings really believe in Laferriere’s long-term outlook so either way, he’ll get signed. Just a matter of logistics, which I have no doubt will be worked out in due time, keeping Laferriere in a Top-9 role with the Kings next season and for many more.