These are words Mika Zibanejad is going to live with, for good or for bad, as long as he is a Ranger. He forever will be linked to Derick Brassard, for whom he was traded this summer as “Big Game Brass” was sent to his hometown Senators.
Before Zibanejad’s first postseason with the Blueshirts started, before they went down 2-1 in their first-round series against the Canadiens with Game 4 on Tuesday night at the Garden, and before he struggled mightily for those first three games, he said this:
“Of course I am aware of what [Brassard] did in the playoffs, but they didn’t bring me here to be the next Brass,” Zibanejad said on April 7.
Here was Zibanejad on Monday, doing his best to explain away what had happened thus far and why he had shrunk under the more intense spotlight of the playoffs.
“I’ve been too passive for myself,” Zibanejad said. “The mistakes I’ve made is being way too passive, and that’s not the type of player I am. I don’t know. If I had the answer, it wouldn’t look like that.”
The Rangers desperately need more from Zibanejad if they want to climb out of this slight hole, and it was made clear early in the regular season he has quite a bit more to give. But his first campaign on Broadway was defined by the broken leg he suffered Nov. 20, which kept him out for two months.
Before that, he was a dynamic and fast center, putting up five goals and 15 points in the first 19 games. After that, his game came only in spurts, and the good moments were few and far between en route to finishing with 14 goals and 37 points in 56 games.
An introspective and thoughtful 24-year-old from Sweden, Zibanejad had seen his confidence waver, and he said he needed to readjust his mindset. Though he doesn’t want to make mistakes, he again has to be willing to take a few risks to play the way he knows he can.
“I think my mindset is that mistakes are going to be happening out there, but I’d rather — thinking over these last three games — my mindset clearly has to change to making mistakes and trying to make plays,” he said. “Right now, for whatever reason, I’m not even trying to make them. I lose the puck in situations where I usually don’t, and that’s not good enough.”
It is not only Zibanejad who is struggling, leading to the Rangers’ franchise-worst, six-game home playoff losing streak they bring into Game 4. But his poor play has been exacerbated by how much coach Alain Vigneault leans on him in important situations, like when he was on against Montreal’s top line in overtime of Game 2 and was weak in front of his own net, unable to keep Alexander Radulov from jamming in the game-winning goal.
Yet Vigneault was not willing to pin blame on Zibanejad, spreading it around to the nameless many who need to pick up their collective effort.
“I don’t need to see more from [Zibanejad] than I need to see from the rest of my group,” Vigneault said. “I need the whole group to be better. Everyone in that room, to a man, knows that their game can be better and needs to be better, with and without the puck. We’re very aware of that.”
Rangers general manager Jeff Gorton made the trade not just as a zero-sum swap, but because Zibanejad is five years younger and on the final year of a contract carrying a $2.625 million salary-cap hit as opposed to Brassard’s $5 million hit that doesn’t expire until the end of the 2018-19 season. After this season is over, Zibanejad will be a restricted free agent with arbitration rights. If his play stays at the same level and the postseason ends quickly, it could be a rather contentious negotiation.
“It’s the playoffs,” Zibanejad said. “You can’t dwell on things.”