New York Rangers midseason report cards: Top six forwards
The New York Rangers find themselves smack dab in the middle of their 2017-18 campaign. With that said, it is time to give out midseason report cards! Today, we evaluate the top-six forwards.
The New York Rangers have had a very up and down season. They started the season off 3-7-2 and looked to be completely out of the playoff picture. Now they sit in third place in the Metropolitan Division with a 22-14-5 record entering Sunday night’s game.
The team has been inconsistent and so have some of the members of their top six. Some of that inconsistency has been due to inconsistency. Some of it has even been due to poor–and sometimes horrific–coaching by Alain Vigneault.
But there have been a lot of bright spots too. The Rangers are a very young team with a pretty young top-six with loads of potential.
Let’s rank their performances through the first 41 games of the season.
Mika Zibanejad
Zibanejad came out of the gates on fire for the Rangers. The newly appointed first line center scored 11 goals and 11 assists in his first 24 games of the season. He was playing great hockey in all three zones and offensively, he and his linemates Pavel Buchenvich and Chris Kreider were a force to be reckoned with.
And then he suffered a concussion.
The injury forced Zibanejad to miss nine games. He came back on December 19th against the Anaheim Ducks. Eight games later, Zibanejad is just rounding back into form. He has one point in his last eight games, a goal against the Chicago Blackhawks.
Zibanejad will be forced work his magic with rotating linemates with Kreider’s injury and the roller coaster ride up and down the lineup that Buchnevich is currently riding thanks to their crazy coach.
It’s gonna take some time for him to get back to where he was before the injury. Concussions are tricky and aren’t easy to come back from. If Zibanejad plays anything like he did in the team’s first 20 games for the rest of the season, the Rangers have a future star on their hands.
GRADE: A
Chris Kreider
Kreider’s M.O. over the years has been show up for a few games and then disappear for a few games. This season started out different, though.
Kreider only tallied three points, all assists, through his first eight games but he was all over the ice during that span. He and his linemates Mika Zibanejad and Pavel Buchnevich were nearly unstoppable for the first month and a half of the season. In fact, they were the only thing the team had going for them in October.
The team finished the month with a 4-7-2 record but the line looked great. Kreider speed and physicality meshed perfectly with Zibanejad’s playmaking ability and Buchnevich’s all-around offensive brilliance.
Kreider was on a stretch where he tallied five points in seven games when he was taken out of the game after the first period against the Capitals on December 27th. As it turned out, Kreider was being rushed the hospital where he’d later find out that he had a blot clot in his right arm.
Kreider will undergo a rib resection surgery and there is no timetable for his return. The team could greatly use his services but it is best for both Kreider and the team long-term if he takes his recovery slowly.
Regardless, Kreider posted 22 points in 37 games which would put him on pace to score 49 points in an 82 goal season. While that isn’t exactly the total you’d expect from Kreider, he played better than the numbers say he did.
GRADE: A-
Pavel Buchenvich
There aren’t enough superlatives in the English language to throw in Buchnevich’s direction so I looked up some words in Russian that describe the Rangers most promising young player:
удивительно, замечательно, фантастика
In his second season in the league, Buchnevich currently ranks third on the team in points with 26 through 41 games which is a 52 point pace for the season. While his points per game numbers have slipped this year due to Alain Vigneault ignorantly scorching his productivity by moving him to the fourth line, he was on pace to have a very similar second season as Tampa Bay Lightning star Nikita Kucherov.
Buchenvich has only received an average of 14:44 of ice time a game, last amongst the team’s top six forwards. That number has also fallen recently and he will soon be passed by Jesper Fast, Michael Grabner, and Jimmy Vesey if things don’t change soon.
He has made the most of his opportunities, though, and has looked like a budding star all season long. Who knows what is going to happen to him the rest of the year. Hopefully, he will have a new coach in 2018-19 who will be able to utilize him properly so we can see him realize his full potential.
GRADE: A+
Mats Zuccarello
Zuccarello has had at least 59 points in three of the last four seasons. Now at age 30 and in his prime, the Norwegian is on pace to break his career high in points.
Through 40 games, Zuccarello leads the team in points with 31. He has eight goals and 23 assists on the season and is back to his wizard ways with the puck.
Zuccarello continues to play a fearless brand of hockey, putting his smaller 5-foot-8 body in the dirty areas and taking no flak from anybody. This is what has made him a fan favorite on Broadway over the years.
It almost seems like he gets better and better each season. That is good for the Rangers because if Kreider is out long term like is expected, Zuccarello is gonna be depended upon even more to pick up the Rangers offense.
GRADE: A
Kevin Hayes
Despite starting 58.7 percent of his shifts in the defensive zone, the most of any forward besides Jesper Fast, Kevin Hayes’ point production is down dramatically. The big Dorchester, Massachusetts native is on pace to score just 34 points this season which would be his career low.
Even with that said, Hayes hasn’t been playing as bad as the numbers indicate. Vigneault using him in a defensive role is probably not ideal for his archetype but regardless, Hayes has been using his body much better than in years past on the forecheck and to protect the puck.
Regardless, Hayes needs to start producing a bit more on the scoresheet. He is due for a new contract in the offseason and he is currently giving the Rangers a reason to withhold him from a big payday.
GRADE: B-
Rick Nash
You can more or less take everything that was said about Hayes and apply it to Nash. The only differences are that Nash was brought here to score goals at an elite level and that he is past his prime.
While he has had many games this year where he has dominated the competition with his size and strength, Nash still can’t finish. It’s past the point of being just ‘snakebitten.’ While it is true that Nash is shooting at the lowest percentage of his career, he has shot under 12 percent for seven of the last eight seasons.
Next: Can the Rangers survive without Chris Kreider?
Nash plays a phenomenal defensive game and is one of the top defensive forwards on the team. At the end of the day, the roster was built counting on Nash being able to be one of the team’s top goal scorers. He simply can’t finish his opportunities anymore. At this point in his career, Nash is a great defensive forward who will score close to 20 goals and 35-40 points. That simply isn’t going to cut it.