When looking for a read on the winner of the Mike Bossy Trophy that is awarded to the best professional prospect in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, it is not a bad idea to check in with Mike Bossy himself.
And perhaps even more so when the recipient of the award, Alexis Lafreniere, is poised to become the first-overall selection of the October 2020 NHL draft, and the Rangers are the team poised to snap him up.
The NHL won’t be too big for Lafreniere and neither will New York, whose Original Six team has never had the first-overall pick since the universal draft was inaugurated in 1969.
“He will be a role model and the example that it is possible to make it here and then go to the NHL.”
Lafreniere comes from a family of athletes. His sister, Lori-Jane, was an upper-echelon soccer player. His parents, Hugo Lafreniere and Nathalie Bertrand, were big-time softball players. Alexis Lafreniere was an excellent baseball player, too, and for a time weighed a future in that sport, winning a provincial Pee Wee AA championship playing for the Laurentides Red Sox.
NEW YORK SPORTS THIS WEEK 