Expect a lot of emotion in Chris Kreider's return Monday at the Garden
Chris Kreider of the Anaheim Ducks skates during the first period against the New York Islanders at UBS Arena on Dec. 11, 2025. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Nothing lasts forever, of course. There was always going to come a day when Chris Kreider would stop playing for the New York Rangers.
It just doesn’t seem right that after he was done here, he’d be moving on and playing for someone else.
But here we are. On Monday, Kreider — who stepped into the Rangers’ lineup for the 2012 playoffs, fresh off winning a second NCAA championship in three years with Boston College, and proceeded to play 13 seasons for the Blueshirts — returns to Madison Square Garden wearing the white and orange of the Anaheim Ducks, which will look so strange.
He’ll have a crew of former Rangers teammates with him. Jacob Trouba, who was the captain of the Rangers 13 months ago, also will be making his first visit to the Garden since he was traded to Anaheim last season. Artemi Panarin’s former running mate, Ryan Strome, who’s been gone a few years now, will be coming back as well, as will 2022 trade deadline pickup Frank Vatrano.
All of those other guys had a positive impact on the Rangers while they were here, but they all started out somewhere else. Heck, Strome started his career as an Islander.
But Kreider was a homegrown guy, one who — as he said in his introductory Zoom conference when he was traded to Anaheim over the summer — may have come from Boxford, Massachusetts, but grew up and became a man in New York.
There figure to be more than a few people choking up when his welcome back highlight video is played.
Look, the NHL’s hard salary cap forces teams to make tough decisions sometimes. There is little to no room for sentimentality in this business when you’re up against the cap and dealing with an aging player who maybe isn’t quite what he was.
The Rangers needed to create room under the $95.5 million cap to pay for the contract extensions to Igor Shesterkin and Alexis Lafreniere, and both Kreider and Trouba had big salaries that were tradable — that is, without no-move clauses.
Still, it hurts that the Rangers couldn’t have figured out some other way to squeeze everyone under the cap instead of trading away a franchise icon who is third in goals in Rangers history, first in playoff goals and tied for first in power-play goals — and who gave the Rangers a hometown discount when he signed a contract extension in 2020.
And in some ways, it feels a little like Kreider and Trouba were thrown under the bus as the Rangers tried to explain away the disappointment of last season.
In Kreider’s case, he did struggle last season, though injuries were a big part of that. His 22 goals and eight assists (in 68 games) represented his lowest point total in a full season since his rookie year of 2012-13 and his lowest goal total since 2017-18, when a blood clot in his arm and a malformed rib forced him to miss 24 games.
After his and Trouba’s names were included in the leaked memo sent out by Rangers general manager Chris Drury as being available for trade, Kreider revealed he’d been playing through a painful back injury early in the season. He later suffered from vertigo and had a hand injury after the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament that required offseason surgery.
With the Ducks this season, Kreider, 34, and with gray in his goatee, has had a bounce-back performance. He has 13 goals (which would lead the Rangers) and eight assists in 28 games, skating mostly on the top line with 20-year-old star Leo Carlsson and Troy Terry. He is Anaheim’s leader in power-play goals with six, which is as many as his longtime linemate and best friend on the Rangers, Mika Zibanejad, has to lead the Blueshirts.
“Seeing him do well and his family doing well . . . I’m happy for him,’’ Zibanejad told Newsday last week. “I’m happy as long as he’s happy, obviously. If it’s somewhere else, then that’s the case, but it’ll be exciting to have him back here and looking forward to the reception he’s gonna get when he comes back.’’
It is good to see Kreider having success with his new team while helping the Ducks to a 19-12-1 record that has them second in the Pacific Division. (Trouba’s having a fine season, too, by the way, playing on the top defense pair and putting up five goals, nine assists and a plus-14 rating.)
But with the Rangers 18th in the league in goals scored this season and training camp tryout signee Conor Sheary playing left wing on the top line, it sure would have been nice to see Kreider wearing a Blueshirt on Monday.
Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
