Detroit Red Wings forward Lucas Raymond continued his excellent rookie season with a three-point outing against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday.
Raymond, 19, tallied a pair of goals and added an assist in Detroit’s wild 10–7 loss to Toronto. With his first goal of the night, Raymond became the first rookie to reach 40 points in the 2021–22 National Hockey League season.
In the process, Raymond cemented his place alongside a certain “Nicklas Lidstrom” in the Red Wings’ history books.
The 2020 fourth-overall pick now has 15 goals and 42 points in 53 games with the Red Wings this season. He trails only team captain Dylan Larkin (26 goals, 55 points) and winger Tyler Bertuzzi (23 goals, 44 points) on the Red Wings’ goals and points leaderboards.
Raymond scored Detroit’s first and last goals in Saturday’s game, cutting an early Toronto lead to 2–1 at the 10:33 mark of the first period before tallying the fifth (and final) goal of Detroit’s exciting comeback effort in the third period.
With a five-point outburst of his own in the high-scoring victory, Maple Leafs forward Michael Bunting became the second rookie to 40 points on the season. Bunting, 26, was drafted by the Arizona Coyotes way back in 2014 and finally emerged as a full-time NHL player in Toronto this season, having scored 18 goals and 40 points in 52 games in 2021–22 while primarily playing on Auston Matthews’ wing.
Trevor Zegras (13 goals, 39 points), Moritz Seider (five goals, 39 points), and Anton Lundell (12 goals, 36 points) round out the top five in the current NHL rookie scoring race. With two assists in Saturday’s game, Seider extended his own personal point-scoring streak to six games (and tied Reed Larson’s Red Wings record for the longest such stretch by a rookie defenseman).
In addition to Raymond’s two goals, Sam Gagner, Filip Hronek, Carter Rowney, Joe Veleno, and Michael Rasmussen scored for the Red Wings on Saturday. The Maple Leafs out-shot the Red Wings 39–33.
The Red Wings will return to action on Tuesday, Mar. 1 when they play host to the Carolina Hurricanes at Little Caesars Arena.
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