Free agent forward Mathias Laferriere has decided to take his talents overseas. He has signed with HK Spisska Nova Ves of Slovakia’s Tipsport Extraliga, the team announced on social media. Laferriere spent all of last season in the AHL. His year was split between the Springfield Thunderbirds and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins following a Spring trade that sent Corey Andonovski to Springfield.
Laferriere’s 2024-25 campaign was a muted one. He scored just 18 points across 55 games on the season – 10 in 33 games with Springfield, and eight in 22 games with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. The performance marked a new low for the slight-framed winger, after he totaled 26 points in 50 games of the 2022-23 season, and 25 points in 68 games in 2023-24. Those performances were a healthy ramp up from Laferriere’s nine points in 56 games as an AHL rookie in 2021-22 – but it seems he couldn’t maintain the stout production through a change of teams.
Instead of lamenting in AHL bottom-sixes, Laferriere will test his talents overseas. This will mark the first European hockey of his career, after he grew up through Canadian youth hockey, played American pros, and never made a national team roster. Laferriere was drafted by the St. Louis Blues in the sixth round of the 2018 Draft, on the heels of scoring 41 points in 67 games with the QMJHL’s Cape Breton Screaming Eagles.
He’s a lanky winger who leans on finesse and athleticism to make good plays along the boards. Those attributes could prove a helpful boost to a HK Spisska Nova Ves roster that stood on top of Slovakia’s pro league at the end of last season. Laferriere will join former AHL and ECHL pro Damien Giroux in the move to Slovakia. Despite quaint AHL scoring, sources available to Pro Hockey Rumors suggest that Laferriere was recruited by pro clubs in multiple European countries, and should have the chance to earn a middle-six role with his new club.