#Rangers need Mika Zibanejad to embrace this Big Game moment

The last time the Rangers competed in the postseason was 2017, the intervening two-year absence representing merely a blink of the eye in the life of a franchise. But to give you an idea how long it has been in hockey years, in 2017 Mika Zibanejad was being compared unfavorably to Derick Brassard.

Well not exactly to Derick Brassard, in exchange for whom Zibanejad had been acquired from Ottawa the previous summer, but to “Big Game Brass,” who went 18-26-44 in 59 playoff games while centering the 1A/1B line for the Cup contending Blueshirts.

And in the 2017 playoffs in which the Blueshirts took out the Canadiens in six games before losing in six to the Senators, Zibanejad posted two goals and nine points in 12 matches, not bad, and scored the overtime winner in Game 5 in Montreal. But it was Brassard — Big Moment Brass — who scored the Game 5-tying goal against Henrik Lundqvist with 1:26 remaining in the third period before the Senators won it in OT to irrevocably twist the series his underdog team’s way.

As sands through the hourglass, there is no comparison at the moment between Zibanejad, who has ascended to the upper echelon of the league, and Brassard, who has become a bit player bouncing from team to team. Then, too, there may be more than just a bit coming from Brassard with his Islanders in their qualifying round against the Panthers.

The Rangers, though, they will need far more than just a bit from Zibanejad with the qualifying round best-of-five against Carolina beginning just after noon Saturday in Toronto in the opening game of this entire extravaganza.

They will need No. 93 to become Big Game Mika.

“It’s moments like these that define players,” Ryan Strome said on a Zoom call. “You’ve seen a ton of guys on our team grow during the year and this is another opportunity to grow.

“You’ve got to take these challenges head on and try to embrace it fully because it’s going to ultimately help the team and help you in your career as a player. As I said, these playoff moments usually define players in their long careers.”

Strome was specifically speaking to his own opportunity and responsibility in centering his 1A/1B line with Artemi Panarin on the left side, but the sentiments apply directly to Zibanejad, who blasted into the NHL stratosphere off a final kick in which he registered 19 goals in the final 16 games and 23 in the final 22 to finish with 41 in 59 games. That equates to an 82-game pace of 57 goals.

That tear, of course, included the five-goal game against the Capitals. During the final 16 games, Zibanejad’s shooting percentage was a remarkable 30.2. For the season, it was 19.7 as the 27-year-old Swede became only the seventh player in the hard-cap era to score at least 40 goals with a shooting percentage above 19.5.

The Blueshirts may be overly reliant on their top two lines, but when one has Zibanejad and the other has Panarin, well, they’ve been reliable guys. It is a top-heavy group and everyone knows it. The team rides its horses and so does David Quinn.

Indeed, Zibanejad’s 2019-20 average ice time of 21:38 represented the most for a Rangers center since at least 1997-98, when the league began tracking the stat. Five-on-five, first power-play unit and first penalty-kill tandem. If there were such a thing, he’d be the club’s Swede Army knife.

Neither Zibanejad nor Panarin was especially visible through either summer camp or in Wednesday’s exhibition match, but no one should be unduly concerned. The coach sure wasn’t on the eve of his first NHL postseason game.

“I think [they] just want to play hockey,” Quinn said. “I think this has been a long 2 ¹/₂ weeks for them. Obviously our top players weren’t on top of their game in the exhibition but they just want to play a hockey game.

“Now that we’re this close, they’re excited to get going, they’re confident in what we’re capable of doing. We’re very fortunate to have players of that caliber who can lead the way.”

Panarin was traded by the Blackhawks to the Blue Jackets in exchange for Brandon Saad (!) primarily because of looming cap issues but was deemed expendable by Chicago management after he was limited to one assist in the team’s 2017 first-round sweep by Nashville in which Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews each had two points.

So there is something to prove here for No. 10, who did record 18 points (7-11) in 16 playoff games for Columbus the last two years. And there is something to prove here for Zibanejad, a supporting piece in 2017 who must become much more than that under the bubble.

Who must become Big Game Mika.