Wendell Cruz-Imagn ImagesThrough all of Mike Sullivan’s mixing and matching of the New York Rangers’ line combinations, the duo of Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad has been a consistent link.
Over the course of the season, Sullivan has shuffled his lines around to no end with the hopes of finding sustainable success.
Unfortunately for Sullivan and the Rangers, it’s been taking a bit longer than anticipated to find that prosperity, causing Sullivan to exhaust his line combinations.
“I think we'll find continuity when we find success,” Sullivan said. “I think there's been a fair amount of continuity inside of what the line combinations look like. We have moved pieces around to try to find combinations that we think help them have success. There is continuity within, I think the line structures. I think moving players around to see if we can just find more consistent performance has been something that we've been exploring, and when we find success, we'd be more inclined to stay with them.”
Panarin and Zibanejad have been the exception to the Rangers’ lack of consistency as a group.
Despite being teammates since 2019, Panarin and Zibanejad haven’t really played on a line together on a game-to-game basis before this year.
In a season where the Rangers have struggled from an offensive standpoint, these two forwards are producing at a high rate, especially as of late.
Panarin leads the team with 50 points, while Zibanejad trails slightly behind with 41 points. Both forwards are vastly outproducing the rest of the team, as Vincent Trocheck’s 28 points rank third amongst all Rangers players.
Zibanejad is in the midst of his hottest stretch of the season, recording 12 points in six games, headlined by a five-point performance at the Winter Classic on Jan. 2. The 32-year-old forward has nearly matched his 20-goal total from the 2024-25 campaign, sitting at 18 goals with 35 games still to play.
In that same 12-game stretch, Panarin has recorded 14 points.
Their recent success has been largely due to the way they’ve been able to work off each other from an offensive standpoint.
“I think they're both cerebral players,” Sullivan said of Panarin and Zibanejad. “They both have great offensive instincts… They've been together for a while now, quite honestly, we've been reluctant to break them up because we feel like there's been consistent offense coming from that group.”
Over what has been an inconsistent and frankly demoralizing stretch for the Rangers, the Panarin-Zibanejad duo continues to be one of the few bright spots to hang your hat on.