TARRYTOWN, N.Y. — The meeting wasn’t anything formal, just another in a series of gatherings between coaches and the general manager, all of whom were new to their jobs. Just sitting down to bat ideas around as the 2021-22 New York Rangers training camp was set to begin.
Gerard Gallant, assistant coach Gord Murphy — in charge of the penalty-kill units — and Chris Drury were discussing the team’s approach to the penalty kill. A name came up: Chris Kreider. He’d been a Ranger for a decade and hadn’t been a regular PKer once in that time.
“Murph knew more about him than I did,” Gallant said. “Nobody really thought about Kreids becoming a penalty killer. But Dru said, ‘Hey, let’s try it.’ We thought it would get his feet moving, get him into the game. He’s one of the best skaters in the league. He can put pressure on. So we just said, ‘Let’s give it a shot.’”
It’s Year 4 of Kreider the penalty-killer, and it’s certainly the most lasting impact Gallant had in his two seasons as Rangers coach. At 33, Kreider has become even more than what the brain trust could have hoped when they bandied his name around: The biggest short-handed scoring threat in the league.
“I’ve often found that power-play guys are good penalty killers,” said Peter Laviolette, who has continued what Gallant brought by sending Kreider and Mika Zibanejad over the boards most often as his first PK forward pair. “They see setups and they know what’s about to happen. That second of anticipation, stick positioning — they oftentimes get it and can become really effective penalty killers.
“He has that. And he has the explosiveness the other way to put a power play on edge. And he works at it. He’s a smart guy. He thinks the game pretty well.”
“With his speed,” Zibanejad added, “it just makes people nervous.”
The numbers back up what these coaches saw (and see). Kreider’s short-handed goal on opening night in Pittsburgh was his 10th, tying him with the Flyers’ Travis Konecny for most since 2021-22. According to Natural Stat Trick, the only NHL player who’s been on the ice for more short-handed high-danger scoring chances than Kreider is Zibanejad.
They are the most recent version of an inseparable NHL tandem, taking the mantle from Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand — two elite players who spend more minutes on the ice together than any other forward pair in the league, playing in all three phases of the game. It’s part of what Gallant and Drury had in mind when adding Kreider to the PK mix and part of the reason Laviolette would certainly hesitate to break up the Zibanejad-Kreider duo, either at five-on-five, the power play or on the penalty kill.
They’re simply better together.
“I always liked putting linemates out together in special teams situations,” Gallant said. “Mika’s one of the best penalty-killers in the league, and he’s been doing it for a long time. And Kreids reads so well off Mika already with the power play and at even strength. They’ve played together so long it made sense to use that chemistry on the PK too.”
Kreider said he did some penalty killing at Boston College but the coaches who preceded Gallant with the Rangers — John Tortorella, Alain Vigneault and David Quinn — had plenty of other PK options. Zibanejad and Pavel Buchnevich were a regular PK forward pair under Quinn. After Buchnevich was traded in the summer of 2021 and Kreider stepped in, the close friendship and on-ice bond between Zibanejad and Kreider helped prepare Kreider for his new assignment.
“I was just watching Mika and picking his brain,” Kreider said. “Just trying to be a sponge. Just watching how he was scanning the ice, how he was positioning his stick. There’s still a lot more to learn.”
Zibanejad said his and Kreider’s ongoing PK conversations are all about those little details that may not lead to short-handed offense but are more attuned to the main focus of the penalty kill: keeping the puck out of the Rangers net. Igor Shesterkin has the most to do with that, but since Kreider joined the Rangers penalty kill, they’ve ranked seventh, 13th and third last season.
They’ve allowed one goal in 11 times short so far this season, and that one is canceled out by Kreider’s shorty in the opener.
“You’re more comfortable and you can make better plays when you have that chemistry,” Zibanejad said. “When we pressure, as soon as we turn it over, I know what’s going on. If we have an opportunity to go, we go. It definitely helps to be on the ice with him so much these last three, four years. I might have some things I want to do — like, ‘this is the way I want to kill a penalty’ and then not necessarily to go out of our structure but more like, ‘if I do this, I want you to do this.’
“If you look at our structure, I’m usually the top guy, trying to take away one of the one-timers and he can anticipate a pass over. So I get to work my area a little bit in a two-on-one, and he kind of leaves it to me to take charge and he follows my lead, which is good. When we started, that was I think a help because he could follow what I was doing and then we start to communicate and go from there. We have some things that I want to do, some things that he wants to discuss, and it’s been really good.”
The connection from what Drury and Gallant hoped — that Kreider on the PK would lead to a more engaged player in other areas of the game, as well — to what Kreider has accomplished since the start of the 2021-22 season isn’t exactly a known quantity. Who can say whether an extra two or three minutes of ice time per game, starting in Kreider’s age 30 season, his 10th full year in the NHL, has opened up what has been one of the truly unique late-career explosions?
Kreider has 130 of his 307 career goals since he joined the penalty kill. His ice time went from several years in the mid-17 minute range to consistently over 18:30 the past three-plus seasons. If the Rangers move on from Jacob Trouba next summer, you’d have to think Kreider, who has two seasons left on what feels like one of the best-value contracts in the league at a $6.5 million cap hit, would get consideration as the next Rangers captain.
Coincidence? Yes, possibly. But if the addition of penalty-kill duties made an already beloved, productive player 15 percent more engaged in his game, then maybe it was a bigger decision than one might think.
Gallant, sitting on the deck at his house in Florida last weekend — no damage from the hurricanes, in case you were wondering — didn’t want to take credit for anything. He thought back to the fall of 2021 and thought about some of his past stops as a player and coach and how putting an elite player into a PK role had worked before.
“Stevie Yzerman became a more well-rounded player when he started killing penalties later in his career, and that’s when Detroit started winning Stanley Cups,” Gallant said. “Rick Nash, too. He took on a bigger role as he got older. There’s guys in the league that can do that. I’d say it’s worked out real well for the Rangers. And for Kreids.”
(Top photo of Chris Kreider scoring a short-handed goal: Brad Penner / USA Today)
