It’s not over until it’s over
Every NHL team has to face adversity. The good news for the Rangers is that they performed well without Mika Zibanejad. Igor Shesterkin was out with an ankle injury and now with a broken rib and the team hasn’t missed a beat with Alexandar Georgiev in goal.
Kreider missed one game this season with an upper body injury and the Rangers lost that game to Dallas. He also played two games this week while under the weather and the team won both of those games.
Can they win without Chris Kreider? Absolutely. Will it be more difficult? Of course. And any team with the tandem of Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad has a chance to win very game they play.
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This has been a season of tests for a very young Rangers team and this is just the latest one. Seeing how they respond will tell us a lot about how prepared they are this year for a postseason run.
As for The Fatalists, these injuries are not some kind of joke the hockey gods play on the Rangers and the Blueshirts are not living under some kind of curse. Kreider’s injury was just an unfortunate and unlucky break.
It was as unfortunate as Uf Nilsson’s skate getting caught in a rut while he was hit by Denis Potvin. It was as unlucky as when Jean Ratelle’s ankle was broken by a shot by teammate Dale Rolfe or when Ryan McDonagh’s shot fractured Mats Zuccarello’s skull.
Okay, I will throw the Fatalists a bone and admit that Brian Leetch fracturing his ankle slipping on a patch of ice getting out of a taxi cab in 1993 was some sort of cosmic joke.
A message to the I Told You So’s
If you wanted to trade Chris Kreider at the deadline and are upset that the team didn’t, or if you think the team made a major mistake signing him for seven years, you are entitled to that opinion. However, this was an accident and it’s what happens when a hard disc of frozen rubber hits a human foot at 80-90 miles per hour.
Hindsight is 20-20 and there’s no point in ruing the fact that they kept and signed him. It was a commitment by the New York Rangers to success this year, next year and the year after and while they may regret the deal in five or six years, it is what the team needed right now.
Perhaps the best option is to join a group we didn’t mention, The Optimists. They believe that the Rangers will sneak into the wild card, get Shesterkin and Kreider back for the playoffs and go for a long, fruitful run in the postseason.