When Chris Kreider made his return to Madison Square Garden Monday night, playing his first game against the Rangers as a visiting player with the Anaheim Ducks, he didn’t get the opportunity to match up against his best friend on the Rangers, Mika Zibanejad.
Zibanejad, Kreider’s longtime linemate and the Rangers’ second-line center, was suspended for the game for disciplinary reasons, after he missed a team meeting Monday at the team’s practice facility in Westchester before the team’s morning skate.
“Mika will not play tonight because he violated a team rule,’’ Rangers coach Mike Sullivan announced after the skate. “He missed a team meeting this morning, and so he will not play tonight. He will be available tomorrow.’’
The Rangers had back-to-back games at the Garden Monday against Anaheim and Tuesday against the Vancouver Canucks.
Sullivan said he spoke to Zibanejad, and while the 32-year-old Swede “feels terribly,’’ the rules are the rules.
“Mika and I had a conversation about it. There are logistical challenges that the city presents sometimes, but having said that, I think Mika understands the importance of the rules (and what) we all expect of one another,’’ Sullivan said. “From his standpoint, obviously he feels terribly.
“The one thing about Mika, he’s an honest person,’’ he continued. “He’s a great human being, and he takes responsibility for it. It’s certainly not something that we would like to happen, but having said that, we believe strongly in the process that we have in place, and the process that we have I think is important for everyone to understand what the expectations are. And Mika understands that as a leader on the team.
“Everybody makes mistakes. And we’ll move by this and he’ll be available tomorrow and he’ll be the player that he’s been for us all year long.’’
Zibanejad has probably been, overall, the team’s best forward from the beginning of the season. Entering Monday, he was tied with Artemi Panarin for the team lead in goals, with 11, and third on the team in scoring, behind Panarin and Adam Fox, with 25 points. And not having him in the lineup presented a stiff challenge to a Rangers squad that was already missing Fox, its No. 1 defenseman and power play point man.
Zibanejad, beside centering for wingers Panarin and Alexis Lafreniere, also had been given the task of filling in for Fox on the point of the five-forward first power play unit Sullivan has used since Fox was injured in a game against Tampa Bay Nov. 29.
Without a natural replacement for Fox among the Rangers’ stable of defensemen, Sullivan went with five forwards instead of the usual four-forward, one-defenseman configuration. Initially, he chose Panarin to run the point, preferring to keep Zibanejad in his usual spot in the left circle, where he likes to shoot one-timers.
But the power play went 0-for-10 with Panarin at the point, and gave up a shorthanded goal in the 3-0 loss last Wednesday in Chicago. After that, Sullivan tried rookie defenseman Scott Morrow at the point in the third period of the Chicago game, but in Saturday’s game against Montreal, he used Zibanejad at the point, and the power play went 2-for-2, including scoring the game-winning goal in the 5-4 overtime victory.
Without Zibanejad Monday, Sullivan stuck with the five-forward power play, turning back to Panarin at the point and elevating Will Cuylle to the first unit. But without Zibanejad, the Rangers didn’t have a natural righthanded shooter to take one-timers from the left side of the ice. Cuylle, who played the net front position, is a lefthander, as is Lafreniere who set up in Zibanejad’s spot on the left wing. But Lafreniere is a lefthanded shot, not a righthander, like Zibanejad. So that meant no one-timers from that side.
At even strength, he had to move some pieces around on his top two lines as well. He split up J.T. Miller and Vincent Trocheck, putting Trocheck back between Panarin and Lafreniere and Miller between Cuylle and Conor Sheary. The third line saw rookie Noah Laba between Brett Berard and Jonny Brodzinski, and the fourth line saw the return of Matt Rempe, who came off long-term injured reserve and played his first game since Oct. 23. He played with Sam Carrick and Taylor Raddysh.
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.