New York Rangers Report Card: Chris Kreider

Chris Kreider looked to have finally put it all together for the New York Rangers in 2018-19, but an alarming finish to the year left us all with the same old questions.

Chris Kreider – Grade C+

Our New York Rangers Report Cards for the 2018-19 continue in full swing today as we turn the magnifying glass on Chris Kreider’s year, which started with so much promise only to fizzle out…

His season

Chris Kreider has been somewhat of an enigma for most of his career in the NHL with the New York Rangers since being drafted 19th overall in the 2009 Entry Draft.

A world beater some days, non-existence on others, Kreider has never fully lived up to the potential he arrived in the league with.

That threatened to change at the start of 2018-19 when, playing on a line with Mika Zibanejad and Mats Zuccarello, the power forward exploded offensively and morphed into the elite threat we’ve all been longing to see.

Driven to strive for excellence every single day by new head coach David Quinn, Kreider seemed to thrive in the new culture being created within the Rangers franchise.

The 27-year-old put himself on pace for a 40-plus goal season and he meshed perfectly with Mika Zibanejad, who would go on to record a career year in a number of different categories himself.

After years of scratching the service it appeared that Kreider had finally discovered the perfect formula, which was music to the ears of everyone connected with the Blueshirts.

His all-round, two-way game came on leaps and bounds too as he used his raw speed and brute force to great effect.

Boasting a 6′ 3″ frame and weighing in at 220 lb, Kreider can outmuscle most in the NHL but he’s also an exceptional skater and his ability to surge his way into the offensive zone coupled with the way he could battle his defenseman out of the way for a puck that had been dumped into the corner were major factors in his early season success.

Kreider was also shooting the puck more than he had done the previous year (a career high 201 shots in  2018-19 compared to 137 in 2017-18), buying into Quinn’s philosophy of shoot first and shoot often.

He was also perfecting his craft of being an elite net-front presence, with few players in the NHL able to do a better job when it comes to redirecting the puck.

However, just when things appeared to be trending in the right direction, Kreider’s inevitable inconsistency reared its ugly head once again.

Sparked by the trade of Mats Zuccarello to the Dallas Stars at the trade deadline and then compounded by a lower-body injury, Kreider’s slump was as spectacular as it was hugely frustrating.

Although he was hampered by that injury for much of the latter part of the season, Kreider’s game completely imploded as he registered just four goals over the last 27 games of the year.

He was a shadow of the player who had grabbed the first half of the season by the scruff of the neck and put himself in line for a huge payday.

And that woeful finish will generate plenty of cause for concern heading into the offseason and Kreider’s final year of his current contract.

Why the grade

Consistency. Consistency. Consistency.

If we were just evaluating Kreider’s first half of the year then he would be walking away with a well deserved A.

However, as it is, a C+ seems fair given his struggles down the stretch, which were compounded by a string of injury issues.

Always the pro, Kreider never hid away from the fact that his game had taken a complete nosedive and he was still an extremely good veteran leader for what was the youngest team in the NHL in 2018-19.

You get the very clear sense that Kreider is just as frustrated as all of us when it comes to a lack of consistency plaguing his career, which could still reach the heights once predicted if he can iron out that one major kink.

There were flashes of potential in the latter stages of the year when Kreider played on a top line with Zibanejad and Pavel Buchnevich, and that could well be a tantalizing option with which to start 2019-20.

But, whatever happens between now and training camp, the bottom line remains that Kreider crawled to the finish line in 2018-19 with just four goals in 27 games, compared to 24 in his first 52 contests.

Giving the left-wing a grade lower than a C+ seems harsh given that level of production in the first half of the year and the effort he’d produce night in and night out.

Whatever is said though, the New York Rangers are now faced with a big decision as they start to construct the roster for next year.

As already mentioned, Kreider now has one year left on his current deal which carries an annual average cap hit of $4.6 million.

The Rangers must decide if they are to give their asset a big payday or instead look to trade him for either a boatload of prospects and picks, or maybe the elite blueliner they so desperately crave.

It will be a tough decision for the franchise to make given Kreider’s undoubted talent, but he just needs to find a way of putting it all together over a long period of time.

Hopefully he still has a chance to do that in a New York Rangers jersey.

The numbers

Games: 79
Goals: 28
Assists: 24
Points: 52
Power Play Goals: 7
Power Play Points: 12
Shooting Percentage: 13.9
Shots on Goal: 201
Plus / Minus: 4
PIM: 57
Hits: 36
CF%: 50.1
ATOI: 17:24

Next Report Card: Brendan Lemieux