‘He’s also capable of defending’: Rangers need more from top scorer
The New York Rangers need more offensively from Artemi Panarin, their leading scorer in each of his first six seasons on Broadway.
But they need him to be better on the other side of the puck, as well. Coach Mike Sullivan made that perfectly clear Thursday following the Rangers’ 6-3 loss to the Colorado Avalanche, the best team in the NHL through the first quarter of the season
“I’ve had a lot of conversations with Artemi throughout the course of the season,” he said postgame. “We don’t expect him to be the best defensive player out there, but everyone’s required to play defense – and that’s the conversation that we have.”
Panarin didn’t hit the score sheet in the road loss against the Avalanche. He finished minus-4, though that total was inflated because he was on the ice for Colorado’s two empty-net goals.
However, he was at least partly to blame on Colorado’s first goal, when his senseless throwaway pass in the defensive zone was tipped away and led to Nathan MacKinnon’s game-tying goal with 27 seconds remaining in the first period.
Panarin also failed to pick up Cale Makar in time to prevent the star defenseman from scoring on a wraparound late in the second period, a goal that tied the game 2-2. The Rangers star forward was standing at the right post when Makar flew past him and tucked the puck past Igor Shesterkin at the left post.
Defensive issues are somehwat overlooked when an elite player piles up points, but that hasn’t been the case with the 34-year-old this season.
Panarin leads the Rangers with 19 points (five goals, 14 assists) in 22 games, although he had eight of them in two games — four-point performances against the Montreal Canadiens on Oct. 18 and Tampa Bay Lightning on Nov. 12. At this pace, he would finish with an average of less than a point per game for the first time in seven seasons with New York. Take out the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season and Panarin’s lowest total as with the Rangers is the 89 points he had last season.
However, he did almost nothing offensively against the Avalanche Only one of his six shot attempts got to the net – four were blocked and the other missed the target. Panarin also was charged with one giveaway.
But more concerning to Sullivan is the fact that the Bread Man often looks like he doesn’t have much interest in playing defense. He was a combined plus-93 in his first five seasons with the Rangers before ending last season at minus-9 – the first time in 10 NHL seasons that he wasn’t a plus player. He’s minus-5 through 22 games for the Blueshirts (10-10-2), who are last in the Metropolitan Division.
Rangers need more at both ends from Artemi Panarin
Panarin’s xGF was an appalling 10.65 percent in Denver, per Natural Stat Trick. The Rangers were outshot 11-3 and out-chanced 14-4 at 5v5 with Panarin on the ice.
Sullivan said defense must be a team effort, and that even his team’s best scorers must do their part.
“Everybody’s got to be committed to play defense to a certain level or it’s going to be hard for us to win consistently,” Sullivan explained. “And those are the conversations that I’ve had with him is just recognizing when those situations are when you’ve got to lock down.
“Everybody knows he drives offense; he’s a talented player. But I think he’s also capable of defending when he’s committed.”
Panarin didn’t appear very committed on Thursday against a Colorado team (14-1-5) that has won seven in a row and became the fourth in NHL history to lose just once in regulation in its first 20 games. MacKinnon and Makar are among the half-dozen best players in the NHL, Martin Necas and Brock Nelson are good fits since arriving in trades last season and re-signing with the team, and goaltender Scott Wedgewood is having by far the best season of his NHL career.
“It’s definitely the best team that we’ve played all year,” Sullivan said, “and they might be the best team in the League right now with how explosive they are.
But this was a game the Rangers could have won. They couldn’t hold one-goal leads late in the first and second periods, and allowed what turned out to be the game-winning goal by MacKinnon at 10:48 of the third — 30 seconds after J.T. Miller’s second power-play goal of the game tied the score 3-3.
Panarin is in the final season of the seven-year, $81.5 million contract ($11.64 million average annual value) he signed on July 1, 2019. Contract talks don’t appear to be going anywhere fast, and fellow Russian Alexei Kovalev, a member of the Rangers’ 1994 Cup-winning team, recently told RG.org that “There are even talks that he wants to leave the NHL altogether and go back to Russia. I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s what people here are saying.”
Although Panarin has a full no-move clause in his contract, the Rangers could ask him to waive it ahead of the NHL Trade Deadline in March – especially if his defensive issues continue and extension talks stall.
