The Mika Zibanejad Report Card 2024-2025 will be a dozy. It is really a two -season story for Zibanejad. He was brutal and a huge net negative in the first half of last season, but encouraged it to end the season while bouncing from center to wing. Unfortunately, it is the first half of the season that people stay on, and for a good reason, while ignoring his second half. As usual, there is some nuance in how we should look at our Mika Zibanejad report card.
Zibanejad ended last season with 20 goals and 62 points over 82 games, which is not bad, but also far away from his 91 points two years ago. It is also the second consecutive season of falling point production, but last year you can directly connect with the production of PowerPlay. The Rangers had a terrible powerplay last season, in which Zibanejad only set up 7-12-19 with the benefit of the man. Because of the comparison, he had 19 PowerPlay assists in 2023-2024 and is usually approximately 30 powerplay points.
All taken together, those 10 extra points on the powerplay go a long way to evaluate his season. We cannot ignore the dip in production, but we can also take it with a grain of salt that the mostly deadly PowerPlay was only a scale of itself most of last season. Even with all off -ice issues last season, 70 points instead of 60 just look better.
What I find interesting is the possession of Zibanejad. Are micro states of All three zones are pretty strong, with Zibanejad pretty nice in the overall attack and passing by. Where he was struggling was failed retrievals (turnover), something that the entire team struggled with. There is still a solid hockey player here, especially in the right role.
There are two other interesting points to call out: the first is that the game of Zibanejad on 5V5 was still aware, but the score on the IIC score did not match. This checks because it felt as if the team could not end 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 this all mean? Zibanejad was largely fine on the ice. Many of his problems on the ice come from the unrest in the dressing room, which is impossible to ignore, but we can also miss something outside the dressing room. The only thing we have to work with is how last season happened and who looked listless and checked out. For the first half of the season it was Zibanejad.
But, and there is one but here, the social media reports of his wife are not consistent with the timing of all the drama of Jacob Trouba and Chris Kreider. We can’t really link them to them, because they were Instagram stories, but in December-like Zibanejad her friends posted a thank you for helping their struggles. Hockey dings usually stay in the room, so this seemed slightly different. We will probably never know.
Reporting the Mika Zibanejad report card is difficult. On the one hand, Zibanejad was a leader on the ice and failed to help collect the team in the light of unrest and conflicts. On the other hand, he was still productive, rode the game and there were clearly non-hockey related to ice problems with which he had to deal with. This is difficult. We cannot ignore the first half of the season, but he was far from the only player who had a hard time. We also cannot ignore that he was not nearly as bad on the ice as many made him.
2024-2025 Mika Zibanejad report card Grade: C-
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