The 2024-2025 Mika Zibanejad report card is going to be a doozy. It’s really a tale of two season for Zibanejad. He was brutal and a huge net negative in the first half of last season, but turned it on to end the season while bouncing from center to wing. Unfortunately, it’s that first half of the season that people are hanging on to, and for good reason, while ignoring his second half. As per usual, there’s some nuance to how we need to look at our Mika Zibanejad report card.
Zibanejad finished last season with 20 goals and 62 points over 82 games, which isn’t bad but it also a far cry from his 91 points two years ago. It’s also the second straight season of declining point production, but last year can be directly tied to powerplay production. The Rangers had an awful powerplay last season, with Zibanejad putting up just 7-12-19 with the man advantage. For comparison’s sake, he had 19 powerplay assists in 2023-2024 and is usually around 30 powerplay points.
All things considered, those 10 extra points on the powerplay go a long way to evaluating his season. We can’t ignore the dip in production, but we can also take it with a grain of salt that the usually lethal powerplay was just a shell of itself for most of last season. Even with all the off ice issues last season, 70 points instead of 60 just looks better.
What I find to be interesting is Zibanejad’s possession splits. His microstats from All Three Zones are pretty strong, with Zibanejad grading out pretty nicely in overall offense and passing. Where he struggled was botched retrievals (turnovers), which is something the entire team struggled with. There’s still a solid hockey player here, especially in the right role.
There are two other interesting points to call out: First is Zibanejad’s play driving at 5v5 was still up to par, but the on-ice scoring didn’t match it. This checks out since it felt like the team couldn’t finish all year. Defensively he was a train wreck, but he was always miscast as a shutdown center. That role never played to his strengths.
So what does all this mean? On the ice, Zibanejad was fine for the most part. A lot of his on-ice issues stem from the locker room turmoil, which is impossible to ignore but we could also be missing something beyond the locker room. All we have to work with is how last season transpired and who looked lethargic and checked out. For the first half of the season, that was Zibanejad.
But, and there’s a but here, his wife’s social media posts aren’t consistent with the timing of all the Jacob Trouba and Chris Kreider drama. We can’t really link to them since they were Instagram stories, but in December-ish Zibanejad’s wife posted a thank you to her friends for helping them through their struggles. Hockey stuff usually stays in the room, so this seemed like something else. We likely will never know.
Grading Mika Zibanejad’s report card is tough. On one hand, Zibanejad was a leader on the ice and failed to help rally the team in the face of turmoil and conflict. On the other hand, he was still productive, drove play, and there were clearly non-hockey related off ice issues he was dealing with. This is tough. We can’t ignore the first half of the season, but he was far from the only player struggling. We also can’t ignore that he wasn’t nearly as bad on the ice as many made him out to be.
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