New York Rangers: Mika Zibanejad proving consistent as top center

New York Rangers forward Mika Zibanejad is well into his second season as the team’s undisputed top center, and he’s proving he can produce like one.

When the New York Rangers traded Derek Stepan (and Antti Raanta) to the Arizona Coyotes before the 2017 NHL draft, they made a bold statement: Mika Zibanejad will be the #1 center of the future.

At that point, Zibanejad was coming off an injury-shortened, 37-point campaign. His career high of 51 points, established in his final season in Ottawa, was a low mark for a potential top pivot. Yet, the Rangers saw promise, and put all their chips on the table.

A year and a half later, Zibanejad seems to be vindicating the Rangers’ choice—though injury doubts remain.

Over his two full seasons with the Rangers so far, Zibanejad has missed a total of 36 games. In the 128 games he did play, though, the Swedish forward recorded 84 points. Even with lulls in production after returning from lengthy absences, that’s still 0.66 points per game.

When healthy, however—and Zibanejad appears to be healthy now—his scoring is on another level.

The disappointing 2017-18 season

At the outset of last season, the New York Rangers had playoff hopes.They added marquee free agent Kevin Shattenkirk to a team that had made it within one game of the Conference Finals .   A new top line was primed to break out, featuring Zibanejad flanked by Pavel Buchnevich and Chris Kreider.

During the first two months, things appeared to be on the right track. Until his injury in late November of 2017, Zibanejad was scoring at near a point-per-game pace. His line of 11-11—22 in 24 games led the Rangers, and the offense was humming along.

Then, the injury. Yet another concussion for a player with a history of head injuries derailed the campaign. After his return on December 19, Zibanejad would go six games without another point until he scored against the Chicago Blackhawks on January 3.

Once he swung back into form, though, the production returned. Zibanejad finished with a career-high 27 goals in 72 games. More impressively, he finished sixth in the NHL with 14 power play markers, tied with the likes of Evgeni Malkin and Tyler Seguin.

So while Zibanejad failed to set a new career mark in points (his 47 fell four points short), he recorded the highest goals per game average (0.38) of his career.

An encore performance

Past the quarter mark of the 2018-19 season now, Zibanejad is producing at almost exactly the same rate as he did pre-injury last season. His 21 points in 25 games is tied for the team lead, along with Kreider.

Interestingly, his scoring is somewhat down—8 goals instead of 11—while his assist totals are up. Only two of his goals have come on the man-advantage (25%), while last year more than half came on the power play.

That’s actually a sign of good things, as 5v5 production is more indicative of talent than power play numbers—most of the game happens at 5v5, and is therefore more useful when evaluating performance—and the special teams points will almost assuredly begin piling up soon.

Even more promising are Zibanejad’s shot numbers. He set a personal best last season with 212 shots on goal. That number is 28 better than his previous best (’15-’16 with Ottawa) in nine fewer games.

This season? He’s on pace for 285 shots on goal. Indeed, Zibanejad is shooting under 10% for the first time since his rookie season. If he can return to his career average of 11.2% he could crack the 30-goal mark for the first time.

Indeed, if he rebounds to that career average and maintains this pace in shots, the Rangers’ top center would hit 32 goals this season.

Assuming a clean bill of health moving forward, Zibanejad is on the road to obliterate his previous best numbers and establish himself securely among the best centers in the NHL.