There was a reason Michael Grabner was available this summer for the Rangers to sign him to a relatively modest, two-year, $3.3 million deal.
His previous season with the Maple Leafs looked a lot like the current stretch he is going through — one goal in his past 19 games heading into the Rangers’ Garden match against the Flyers on Sunday night.
“Now you get a little bit of a glimpse of why I scored nine goals last year,” Grabner said Sunday morning. “Most of the year last year was like that, where I was getting a lot of chances and they wouldn’t go in. Just trying to work on it, and hopefully it will turn around here.”
Grabner made a terrific impression in his first two months on Broadway, scoring 12 goals in the opening 20 games of the season. Going into Sunday, he still was tied with Chris Kreider for the team lead with 27 goals, but the relative drought certainly was wearing on him.
“Obviously, it’s getting a little bit frustrating,” Grabner said. “But as long as I’m getting as many chances as I have been the last few games, that’s a positive to look at.”
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That sentiment was echoed by coach Alain Vigneault, who knew Grabner was not brought here necessarily to lead the team in goals.
“You can’t score on the pace he was once, otherwise he’d be an 80-goal scorer,” Vigneault said. “Things evened out a little bit. But the looks are still there, the speed is still backing off the opposition. It’s still scaring a lot of defensemen. It’ll be a big help for us going forward.”
The chances for the speedy, 29-year-old Austrian have been plentiful of late. He just missed an easy tap-in goal during the Rangers’ 4-3 shootout loss to the Penguins on Friday. The most openly frustrated Grabner has looked was when he missed an empty-netter during the team’s 3-0 win late last month in Los Angeles.
It has been going like that for him lately, in stark contrast to the way it started.
“I think if I scored on 10 percent of my chances the last five, six games, I’d be on the same pace,” Grabner said.
Going back to his days with the Islanders, Grabner always has been a streaky goal scorer. He had his career year in 2010-11, scoring 34 goals in the first season after the Isles picked him up off waivers. Before that, he played 20 games in his first year in the league for Vigneault in Vancouver, where the coach first became enamored with his speed.
“For me, anyway, he’s playing well,” Vigneault said. “He’s getting all the looks he was getting early on. Same type of looks. He’s just right now having a little harder time as far as finishing on those. But the looks are there.”
Because of the speed and his defensive awareness, there never has been a shortage of breakaways for Grabner. Yet for a player who seems to average two breakaways a game, he has a low rate of converting. That is partly why it was so surprising how much more successful he was at the start of this year, when everything he touched seemed to go in.
“I think earlier in the year, I was taking my time a little more, slowing up,” Grabner said. “Now, if I have a breakaway, I skate as hard as I can at the net, so it’s tough to make a move.”
With the Rangers nearly locked into the first wild-card spot with three games remaining after Sunday, they are trying to iron some things out to be best prepared for the playoffs. Part of that is getting Grabner scoring again, which made them such an offensively dynamic team to start the season.
“I think that swagger that he had at the beginning,” Vigneault said, “once he gets one, because of the quality of the looks he’s getting, he’ll be fine.”