Regarding Rangers who are not named Matt Rempe.
1. Artemi Panarin — the best big-money free agent signing in franchise history and one of the three best in NHL history, with Zdeno Chara to Boston and Marian Hossa to Chicago — is having the best season of his career.
He is relentlessly driving play while making sweet music with his brother from another continent, Alexis Lafreniere and hardscrabble Vincent Trocheck in the middle. He is creating space for himself to shoot the puck at a higher and more accurate rate than ever before.
He has already established a personal best for goals in a season with 35 with 22 games remaining and his 82 points (35-47) leads the team by 26 (!!!) over Trocheck and Chris Kreider. He has been dazzling and responsible, a joy to watch and a joy with whom to interact.
But his Rangers legacy won’t be defined by this. Instead, it will be defined by his work in this year’s playoffs following a washout first-round against the Devils last year and an underwhelming performance the previous season in the club’s run to the 2022 conference finals.
It is going to be on him, and he knows it — the same way Rick Nash understood it last decade when, other than Henrik Lundqvist, he was the Rangers’ best player across his six-year tenure but is remembered most around these parts for scoring three goals on 83 shots during the 2014 charge to the Cup finals and 14 goals in 73 playoff games during his Broadway run.
I always thought that the Blackhawks trading a 26-year-old Panarin to Columbus after two seasons in the NHL for a package featuring Brandon Saad was bonkers.
Yes, there were salary-cap considerations, but the whispers back then were that Panarin was traded because he’d been ineffective in Chicago’s first-round sweep by Peter Laviolette’s Predators. So that kind of thing has been floating around for a while.
The spotlight will be on Panarin when the tournament starts, and every opponent’s game plan is geared to take away No. 10’s time and space, and force him to go through layers of bodies and traffic. Panarin is going to have to be able to fight to get to the inside.
He’s going to have to be the Rangers’ best player — maybe other than goaltender Igor Shesterkin — in the playoffs the way he has been the team’s best player this season.
I know that he knows that.
2. Mika Zibanejad may be the Rangers’ most essential forward, filling so many roles so well. But one of his roles is to score a goal every now and then, and how he has utterly failed to fill that assignment is this season’s greatest mystery.
No. 93 has been outstanding on the penalty kill and on the defensive side of the puck. His commitment and work ethic have not wavered. His goals-for differential of 55.56 percent is second among forwards to Kreider’s 62.50
But his shot — always a weapon — has gone kerflooey. An almost painfully introspective man, more introspective even than Kreider if that’s possible, No. 93 seems to be overthinking everything in the offensive zone. He’s hesitating on unleashing shots instead of rolling on instinct.
Somehow, Zibanejad has not scored a five-on-five goal since Dec. 23. He has scored a sum of five goals at full strength, getting two in one game the day after Thanksgiving. Compounding the problem, however, is that Zibanejad has scored just three goals on the power play in the past 28 games. This is nuts.
Zibanejad’s attempts and shots on net per 60:00 at five-on-five have decreased from year-to-year since his bustout over the second half of 2019-20, but not dramatically from last year to this. He is getting about the same number of attempts through. His shooting percentage, however, has crashed, 6.6 percent as compared to 12.9 last year and 16.1 in 2019-20.
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On the power play, Zibanejad’s attempts and shots per 60:00 are down from last season but not starkly so. The percentage of shots that are getting through has dropped. So has his shooting percentage with the advantage, going from 20.4 percent last year to 15.8 now.
The Rangers somehow are at the top of the league without production from their presumptive top center. They won’t get through the playoffs like this. Zibanejad is going to need to score, and he knows it, too.
His Rangers legacy will also be defined by the tournament.
3. When Kaapo Kakko played on the third line with Jonny Brodzinski and Will Cuylle, he was the Big Dog, and he played that way, working the walls, cycling, taking the puck to the middle, driving the net and shooting it. The Finn was in command.
I don’t know what the lines will be for Saturday’s match in Toronto — that portends a main event between Rempe and Ryan Reaves — but when Kakko moved up to join Zibanejad and Kreider against the Blue Jackets on Wednesday, he seemed to be trying to adjust to his senior partners and was not particularly effective.
The third line, with Jimmy Vesey taking Kakko’s spot, lacks definition. The lineup suddenly is shorter, especially with the limited time that fourth-line wings Rempe and Adam Edstrom get. And if the top line struggles, they’re going to demote Kakko to the third line for the third time this season?
Unless moving up Kakko was part of a trade-deadline machination, I don’t get it.