Chris Kreider, forever the cerebral and internalizing one, had just come back to the bench after losing control of the puck on a shorthanded breakaway with six minutes to go in regulation of what was then a 2-2 game against the Red Wings on Wednesday at the Garden.
Where he repeatedly smashed his stick over the boards in an emotional display of frustration that I. Have. Never. Seen. From. Chris. Before.
“What? I don’t recall doing that,” Kreider, feigning short-term amnesia before quickly copping to it when I asked him on Friday about the incident. “I don’t know if that’s the first time, but it’s certainly unusual, you’re right about that.
“It’s a tie game, and I felt like I was getting a lot of chances and I was missing those chances. It was extremely frustrating. I was having an issue with my skate earlier in the game and it just boiled over.
“When Jimmy [Vesey] scored after that and we won the game, I was the happiest guy around. If it had gone the other way, I wouldn’t have been the best company for the next 12 to 24 hours.”
Kreider leads the Rangers with 13 goals that entering Friday was good for a tie for eighth overall in the NHL, four off the pace set by Vancouver’s Brock Boeser. There were two players with 15 goals, four with 14 and three with 13. He was tied for second with seven power-play goals, one behind Boeser. His two shorthanded goals were one off the lead shared by a pair of players.
This is the tony neighborhood in which the 32-year-old winger — good grief, the kid who strolled off the BC campus directly into the 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs is 32 already? — resides. Over the past three seasons, Kreider ranks sixth in the NHL in goals with 101, second in PPGs with 41 and first in SHGs with nine.
Pardon me for guffawing every time I see a projected Team USA roster for a planned 2025 International Tournament that does not include him.
The first nine years of his career, Kreider averaged .309 goals per game. The three years ending with 2020-21, he averaged .375 GPG. But starting with 2021-22, No. 20 has averaged .558 GPG. I asked him whether he expects to score now when he might not have had that same mentality a few seasons back.
“I understand how to score now,” said Kreider, who has evolved into a net-front master and a puck-deflector extraordinaire. “I think I had the skill set to put the puck in the net but maybe not the knowledge and wisdom to put myself in positions consistently enough to allow my skill set to take over.
“I know it’s a weird thing to say, but I feel snakebitten. I feel like I’ve had more breakaways the first 20 games of the season than I did the first 10 years of my career. I don’t know if that’s a result of the structure we’re playing in, the way we’re forcing turnovers or maybe playing a little higher in the D-zone and taking a couple of steps behind the D. And then, the penalty-kills.”
Kreider will skate on the left with Mika Zibanejad in the middle and Blake Wheeler on the right for the 12th consecutive match come Saturday afternoon in Nashville. The line is a work in progress, on for six goals and four against in 96:21 of ice time at five-on-five.
Kreider has four goals at five-on-five, Zibanejad two (both in Philadelphia on Nov. 24), and Wheeler none. But the unit did generate K’Andre Miller’s 2-2 tying goal against Detroit midway through the third period after Wheeler had led the rush before both Kreider and Zibanejad made plays in the offensive zone.
“We have a job to do and, first and foremost, it’s to keep the other team from scoring and to play good defense,” Kreider said. “As [Rick] Nash would say, that leads to good offense. I think that’s certainly been the case the last few games.
“But it’s been a lot of post-here, post-there, miss-chance here, miss-chance there. It’s a game of inches, right, so for us it’s about sticking with it offensively, working through it and coming out on the other side and trusting the law of averages will even out.
“Our communication, talking, getting on the same page, they’re all coming along,” he said. “We’re progressing. We’ll be better for it when we’re ultimately generating more chances. We expect to contribute offensively five-on-five.”
The Rangers are 16-4-1. While the Artemi Panarin-Vincent Trocheck-Alexis Lafreniere unit has been the team’s driving force on offense, Vesey, Barclay Goodrow, Nick Bonino and Tyler Pitlick have combined to score seven of the club’s last 15 goals at five-on-five.
“We believe in this group, we believe in this coaching staff and we believe in each other,” Kreider said. “We’re getting contributions from different guys every night, with the exception of Artie, who does it every game.
“That’s just so much fun.”
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