#1. Michael Grabner
Michael Grabner’s 30th birthday falls on opening night of the Rangers’ season. They have to hope Grabner’s surprising scoring touch doesn’t disappear with his 20s.
Unfortunately, Grabner faces an uphill battle to match the 27 goals he scored last year. In hitting the second highest goal total of his career, Grabner scored on a career high 16.7 percent of his shots. Before 16-17, he hadn’t scored as many as 20 goals since 11-12.
The Rangers can ill afford a decline from any of their scoring forwards after trading away first line center Derek Stepan. His absence, the loss of Oscar Lindberg to the expansion draft, and Jesper Fast’s offseason hip surgery combine to leave the Rangers with greatly depleted depth up front to start the season.
Grabner’s elite speed provides a constant threat. It makes some sense for him to boast an abnormally high shooting percentage given the amount of breakaways he creates. That said, Grabner has always generated breakaways and his shooting percentage never went above 14.9 percent before last season.
Next: New York Rangers: Thoughts on College FA’s, Zaripov, Holden and more
Grabner is still an extremely useful forward even if he doesn’t convert at quite as high a rate as 16-17. At 45 percent, Grabner posted by far the lowest corsi-for percentage of his career last year. A bounce back in corsi percentage could help offset a decline in shooting percentage.