There was no runaround here, no pretending that the storyline between the Rangers and Senators going into their second-round playoff series is not one also acutely punctuated by the offseason trade that sent Broadway favorite Derick Brassard up to Ottawa in a deal that brought back the younger and less-expensive Mika Zibanejad.
It was so at the forefront of coach Alain Vigneault’s mind that he approached Zibanejad before Tuesday’s practice, the first time the Rangers were back on the ice after two days off following their dispensing of the Canadiens in a six-game first-round victory. Vigneault wanted to see how Zibanejad was feeling, knowing that once Game 1 starts on Thursday night in Ottawa, it’s only going to get more intense.
“I met him quickly [Tuesday] morning, made sure that he was in the right place,” Vigneault said. “Sometimes players want to put a little bit too much pressure on themselves. He’s in a good spot. He’s in a good place. He’s got to go out there and do what he did in the last four games against Montreal — just play. Make the plays, skate with the puck, have fun with it. If he does, he’s going to be fine.”
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From all one can gather, it doesn’t seem as if the normally introspective and thoughtful Zibanejad is feeling any added pressure.
“When I saw the schedule and I saw the playoff tree, I knew it was a possibility that it was going to be them,” he said. “It’s like any other team now, just want to get to four [wins] first.”
Zibanejad had an up-and-down regular season that was undercut by a broken leg sustained on Nov. 20 that sidelined him for almost two months. And still, his 14 goals and 37 points in 56 games was superior to the 14 goals and 39 points that Brassard put up in 81 regular-season games for the Senators.
Yet early in the Montreal series, Zibanejad was struggling. When reunited on a line with Chris Kreider and Pavel Buchnevich in Game 4, he began to be more aggressive, the exclamation point coming with his Game 5 overtime winner in the Bell Centre.
He has dealt with the Brassard comparison all year — including, back on April 7, when he said: “They didn’t bring me here to be the next Brass.” The next day, Zibanejad dealt with it again when he finally returned to Ottawa as a member of the Rangers in the team’s penultimate game of the regular season, when he scored the lone goal in a 3-1 defeat while the Blueshirts played with a JV squad while already locked into their first wild-card spot.
Then the playoffs started, and Brassard lived up to his big-game reputation by compiling two goals and eight points in his team’s six-game dismantling of the hobbled Bruins in the first round. With Zibanejad’s slow start, the questions started arising again until he quelled them by starting to play the way he did to start this regular season.
And now, the two go head-to-head, but it’s not something Zibanejad was trying to focus on.
“I think that’s for you guys [the media] to worry about. For me, it’s just about winning this series; taking a game at a time and winning,” he said. “It’s all about the team. I knew it was going to come up and be brought up, but for me, it’s just try to just win. That’s all it is.”
Rangers general manager Jeff Gorton traded away the 29-year-old Brassard over the summer in large part due to the three years remaining on the five-year, $25 million contract he rewarded him starting with the 2014-15 season. That annual salary-cap hit of $5 million was almost cut in half by bringing in the $2.625 million carried by the 24-year-old Zibanejad, who is a restricted free agent (with arbitration rights) this offseason.
Also, part of this equation is what a popular player Brassard was in the locker room. But just as Zibanejad is trying to focus on the series, Vigneault wants Brassard’s good friends to temporarily forget the personal aspect — no matter how hard that might be.
“Definitely going to tell all my players that Brass, for the next two weeks, is not their friend anymore,” Vigneault said. “There will be no little tapping of the butt as he goes by on the ice.”