Mika Zibanejad is the longest-tenured player on the New York Rangers. In his 10 seasons with the club, he’s seen two iterations of “The Letter,” played on the best regular season team in franchise history, and stood witness to years of both organizational triumph and dysfunction.
When his career is over, he’ll have endless war stories from his time with the Rangers.
Over the past couple of seasons, Zibanejad has watched a number of his teammates — many who should have been core pieces of the Rangers for years to come — leave New York in the wake of the 2023-24 team that amassed 114 points in the regular season and was two wins away from the Stanley Cup Final.
Barclay Goodrow, Jacob Trouba, Kaapo Kakko. Chris Kreider, his good friend. Now, Artemi Panarin, who was held out of the Rangers’ 5-2 loss to the New York Islanders on Wednesday and will sit until president and general manager Chris Drury can trade him.
Zibanejad is, by this point, no stranger to the feeling of suiting up for a game without a long-time teammate.
“No matter the circumstance, it’s always a weird feeling when you play with someone for so long, and then they’re not in the lineup for whatever reason,” Zibanejad said after Wednesday’s game. “It’s different, but we have to keep playing.”
Head coach Mike Sullivan, meanwhile, didn’t feel like the decision to hold Panarin out of the lineup had any impact on his team’s play.
“I don’t think so,” Sullivan said. “I thought we played hard. I think our guys had the right intentions. I thought we had a decent start to the game. I don’t think that had an impact.”
The Rangers’ postgame media availability on Wednesday night at UBS Arena was the first time any player or Sullivan had spoken publicly about the club’s decision to hold Panarin out. Zibanejad said the team only learned that Panarin wouldn’t be playing right before the game.
Panarin’s Rangers legacy is equally impressive as it is intriguing. From his arrival ahead of the 2019-20 season as a free agent, no Ranger comes remotely close to eclipsing his 607 points in 482 regular-season games — Zibanejad currently ranks second with 481 points over that span.
Panarin finished first on the Rangers in scoring in each of his six full seasons with New York. After Wednesday’s game, he still leads the club in scoring with 57 points. Only one other Ranger — Zibanejad in 2022-23 — eclipsed the 90-point threshold during Panarin’s tenure. Every other season, he was by far the club’s most potent offensive player.
In 2023-24, Panarin put up a career-best 120 points. It was the second-highest point total by a Ranger, trailing only Jaromír Jágr’s 123 in 2005-06.
That same season, Panarin scored the series winner in a Game 7 overtime to lift the Rangers over the Pittsburgh Penguins. He finished third on the team in playoff scoring in 2024 with five goals — four of which were game-winners — and 15 points.
“He’s a special player,” defenseman Braden Schneider said about Panarin. “He can score on command, it seems like. He has the puck on a string, and he’s been an awesome guy to learn from. He’s a special player and a great guy in the locker room. Not having him in the lineup, it definitely hurts a bit.”
The big question surrounding Panarin’s time as a Ranger, growing louder as the club officially committed to a re-tool earlier this month and informed their star winger that they would not be offering him an extension, is: What could’ve been?
Panarin was, on paper, the Rangers’ best player in each of his seven seasons in New York and the club’s most prolific individual play-driver in years. The Rangers also played their most exciting hockey in nearly a decade, reaching the Eastern Conference Final in 2022 and 2024.
But the club’s success in this era was short-lived. New York followed up its 2022 run with a poor seven-game loss in the first round in 2023. Since they were eliminated by the Florida Panthers in Game 6 of the East Final in 2024, they haven’t been back to the playoffs.
The club’s efforts to get back to contention have only led them to where they are now: another letter, a new direction. That, of course, is not Panarin’s fault.
“He’s one of the best Rangers of his generation,” Sullivan said. “He’s not an easy guy to replace when he’s not in the lineup, but everybody understands it. And we’re going to control what we can, and we’re going to see what we can take from this one.”
