Colin Stephenson: Rangers are adapting to life without Artemi Panarin
Artemi Panarin of the Los Angeles Kings warms up before a game against the Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Monday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
When Artemi Panarin returned to Madison Square Garden on Monday, five weeks after the Rangers traded him to the Los Angeles Kings as part of their “retool,’’ he found himself playing against a Blueshirts team in a much better place than when he left.
Before losing to the Kings, 4-1, they had won four straight — their longest winning streak of the season — and had earned points in eight of their nine games since the Olympic break. Panarin’s former linemate, Alexis Lafreniere, was named the NHL’s first star of the week Monday for his five goals and two assists in four games last week. Rookie Gabe Perreault has been dazzling and had a four-game point streak (2-5-7).
The Blueshirts had scored 29 goals in the previous six games, and the winning had created positive vibes in the locker room that weren’t there before.
So was it possible that the Rangers actually might be a better team without Panarin?
Get serious. No.
The Rangers were winning partly because they’ve been playing a bit of a soft schedule, but mostly because they’re adapting to reality.
Panarin, who drew applause when he took the Garden ice for warmups Monday and louder applause when he completed his familiar warmup routine by flipping two pucks high into the empty goals — one into the Kings’ goal, the other into the Rangers’ goal — had an assist in his 15 minutes, 42 seconds. He said afterward that he was plenty nervous in facing his former team.
“Emotional,’’ he said when asked how it was for him. “Especially during warmups.’’
He said watching the tribute video the Rangers showed on the center ice scoreboard during the first TV timeout was awkward.
“I usually skate around in the commercial breaks, and I tried to watch less than I should,’’ he said. “I’ve got to focus on the game, not about trying to stop crying.’’
Now that his return has come and gone, the Rangers can move on and deal with the reality that Panarin is not on their team anymore. And they have to figure out how to play without him.
Mike Sullivan said the biggest thing about Panarin not being here is that other people — he mentioned Lafreniere, but the same would apply to Perreault — are getting opportunities to play more prominent roles. And they are taking advantage of the opportunity.
“Listen, we’re trying to take the group that we have, we’re trying to build a team game, we’re trying to be hard to play against,’’ Sullivan said at the morning skate Monday. “And I really like the direction that we’re going. I feel like we’ve got some consistency to how we’re playing the game. I think there’s a good feeling because we’ve had some success as of late in the win-loss column.’’
Panarin was leading the Rangers in scoring at the time he was traded, Feb. 4, and led the team in scoring every season since signing here as a free agent in 2019. They went to two Eastern Conference finals — under two different coaches — with Panarin driving the offense and made the postseason four times in his first six seasons (including the 2020 bubble postseason). Their only misses were the 56-game COVID-19 season in 2021 and last season’s disaster.
Panarin helped make the Rangers’ power play one of the top units in the league, and in his career-best 120-point season in 2023-24, he helped his linemates, Lafreniere and Vincent Trocheck, have career years, too.
While the Rangers are winning games right now, the six teams they’ve beaten since the break include two current playoff teams (Pittsburgh and Minnesota), fading Philadelphia, Toronto and Winnipeg squads, and the team with the second-worst record in the league (Calgary).
In their post-break surge, the Rangers have been strengthened by getting goaltender Igor Shesterkin and defenseman Adam Fox back from injuries. Plus, since general manager Chris Drury’s Jan. 16 letter announcing the decision to “retool,’’ the pressure to win is off.
“I’m sure that helps,’’ Trocheck said of the notion that the Rangers are playing pressure-free now. “But I mean, we haven’t been healthy, really, all year, right? I think we’ve played 15 games with a full lineup? So I mean that definitely helps.
“Obviously, Shesty’s been outstanding since he came back,’’ Trocheck said. “But I just think that when we have our full lineup, it’s just able to make us a deeper team and we’re able to play the style hockey that we want to play.’’
Sullivan was asked if not having Panarin — a creative but often risk-taking east-west-type player who he said was “not always going to play the game plan to the letter of the law, so to speak’’ — made it easier for him as a coach to get the rest of the team to play the more direct, defensively responsible team game he espouses.
“Not necessarily,’’ he said. “Every team has players, I think, of that nature, that have high-end instincts and are going to go off the grid a little bit. You know that. I just think that’s the nature of elite talent.’’
It’s a talent the Rangers are going to have to find a way to live without.
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.
