It has only been three games, and there are plenty of points and games and streaks and slumps to navigate before the thought of Artemi Panarin reaching — or topping — 120 points becomes plausible, but the Rangers star picked up where he left off at the end of last season.
Panarin collected three more assists during the 4-1 win against the Red Wings on Monday, moving him into a tie with the Golden Knights’ Jack Eichel and the Penguins’ Evgeni Malkin for the NHL lead with seven and helping him become just the fourth player in franchise history — along with Chris Kreider in 2016-17, Bernie Nicholls in 1990-91 and Mike McEwen in 1978-79 — with multiple points in each of the team’s first three games to open a season.
Kreider finished with 53 that year, while Nicholls and McEwen had 73 and 58 in their seasons, respectively.
While stringing together points in 14 consecutive games to start last season, Panarin only collected five through the first three games before erupting for 33 multi-point games the rest of the year to shatter his career-high by 24 points.
This time, Panarin needed to navigate a preseason scare, exiting a pair of games with a lower-body injury, before the opener even arrived and he skated alongside Alexis Lafreniere and Vincent Trocheck.
“They’ve been good, they’ve been dangerous,” head coach Peter Laviolette said of the Rangers second line after practice Sunday. “[Panarin’s] been generating and getting looks and they’ve generated offense, but we want to make sure that we’re doing the right things on both ends of the ice.”
Panarin started the regular season with a pair of assists.
Three nights later against the Utah Hockey Club, Panarin collected two goals.
That carried over into the second win of the season, when he picked up the primary assist on Lafreniere’s goal and Mika Zibanejad’s empty-net tally — while also threading a cross-ice pass to Zibanejad in the second to spark a power-play sequence that ended with Kreider redirecting the puck into the Red Wings net.
On Lafreniere’s goal, Panarin split a pair of Detroit skaters and veered toward the center of the Detroit zone, drawing extra attention before slipping a pass to Lafreniere for a one-timer.
Will Cuylle added five more hits Monday and sits eighth in the league with 14 through three games — after finishing with the seventh-most last year as a rookie.
No other Rangers player has collected more than seven hits.
The Rangers third line — Cuylle, Kaapo Kakko and Filip Chytil — had the most expected goals for among forward lines entering Tuesday’s games (3.2), per Money Puck.
They also lead the Blueshirts with 12 high-danger chances for, after adding another pair against Detroit, with Cuylle and Chytil accounting for their unit’s pair of goals.
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