The 2020-21 season is quite limited – Zibanejad has played just nine games so far – but the scoring numbers have been grim. Zibanejad’s lone goal this season came on the power play, and his lone assist came on a Pavel Buchnevich goal in the second game of the year.
That would be a slow start for any player of Zibanejad’s stature, let alone the player that we watched tear the Eastern Conference apart (41 goals and 34 assists) just one season ago.
Scoring slumps happen from time to time, and it’s important that when you are doing anything forward looking, you are reconciling two critical questions:
- Is the coaching staff still utilizing the player in the same or similar manner?
- Is the player still offensively active and being undermined by poor puck luck, or have his (and his linemates’) offensive scoring opportunities dwindled with time?
Let’s start with the deployment question, because I do think it’s the more interesting of the two in this case. We know simple ice time isn’t a factor – he’s playing about a shift less than last season but he’s still comfortably over 20 minutes a night, about where we would expect a top-six centre on a given team.
The players he’s playing with have changed though – in large part because of the Rangers winning last year’s draft lottery and grabbing blue-chip prospect Alexis Lafreniere with the first-overall pick. Lafreniere has been boosted immediately into the Rangers top six, and that means playing a decent chunk of minutes with Zibanejad.
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Since Zibanejad’s playing relatively similar minutes and with relatively similar teammates, let’s turn our attention to the offensive production categories.
If we were concerned about Zibanejad’s slow scoring being indicative of larger struggles to come, we would see that Zibanejad’s simply less active in the offensive zone – he’s shooting less, his teammates are shooting less, the team is generating a higher proportion of their shots from the perimeter, and so on.
This is the sort of data that you look at as a coaching staff and conclude that changes may be needed.
The Rangers can ill-afford to have a line inside of the top six this unproductive offensively, and whether it’s on the shoulders of Zibanejad or his teammates (the answer is probably all of the above), the reality is they have taken a considerable step down from where they were one season ago. A season ago that, despite lucrative offensive seasons from their best players, saw the team only reach the postseason because of the expanded playoffs.
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Originally Posted by Keirik
