The New York Rangers have been a bit lucky of late. They hit a nice patch in the schedule against bad teams and took advantage. They have been carried primarily by Rick Nash, and to a lesser extent by Martin St. Louis, Derek Stepan, and Derick Brassard. Mats Zuccarello has finally started to turn up his game and is becoming that scoring machine we saw last year. The last item that remains is getting Chris Kreider going, and that is no easy task.
Kreider’s stats of 5-10-15 in 32 games (38 point pace) this season are a far cry from his 17-20-37 in 66 games last year (45 point pace). Since November 1, Kreider has just three goals and six assists. Just two of those points –both goals– have come on the powerplay. For a top-six forward, that’s worse than a slump. That’s bordering on a terrible first half for a kid that was supposed to take a step forward this season.
Kreider is shooting at the same rate this season, with 2 SOG per game. Looking at his even strength SH% only, he is down from 10.58% last year to a ming-bogglingly bad 3.92% this year. That’s some terrible luck. It will regress back to about 9%, meaning Kreider is due for some sort of hot streak in the near future. That is certainly one culprit.
Another culprit: Kreider’s puck possession is way down this year. Last season, Kreider spent the majority of his time with Derek Stepan and Rick Nash, putting up an impressive 55.2% CF. That number breaks down to approximately 55.5% with Stepan and Nash, and about 52% when a part from the pair (rough estimates, but you see the picture I’m painting here).
This year, Kreider has again spent time with Stepan, but his RW is Martin St. Louis. He’s above the break-even line at 51% CF, but that’s still a 4% drop off from last season, which is significant. Things get more interesting when you look at Stepan’s effect on Kreider, which is amazingly bad. We are victims of small sample size here, but Kreider and Stepan together have a subpar 48% CF when on the ice together. When Kreider is apart, his numbers jump to 53.8%, which is more in line with what we expect from Kreider. Stepan when away from Kreider: 36.3% CF. That’s horrible.
*-I’m focusing on Stepan here because the drop from Nash to MSL isn’t significant enough to cause this much of a scoring drought for Kreider.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming Kreider’s slump on Stepan, but it could certainly be a contributing factor. Stepan is a guy that can carry his teammates and drive play, Kreider appears to need that driving force on his line to be a big time producer. The latter part of that sentence is something we’ve seen over the past few seasons. It’s not a bad thing, it’s recognizing that Kreider is an amazing talent that needs a center to get him the puck. I’m just theorizing here though.
It’s only been 34 games, so we are dealing with small sample sizes. That said, Kreider won’t continue shooting a paltry 3.92% at even strength, and Stepan won’t continue being a possession dumpster fire. Kreider’s start is a big cause for concern, but the numbers say his bad luck won’t continue.
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