Artemy Panarin is gradually moving ahead in the “Best” nomination Russian NHL Player of the Season. The New York Rangers forward, against the backdrop of how the rest of his compatriots are on fire, makes it even brighter and more impressive. He is increasingly becoming a contender for the Art Ross Trophy and, according to mathematical forecasts, he can score more than 140 points at the end of the championship. Russian hockey overseas has never seen such numbers.
Khlebushek began to greedily collect scoring points from the very start of the championship. Since then, Artemy has not stopped. Not a single game has passed in the season without Panarin crediting at least one real action that led to a goal. The next performance of the star Russian came in the match with the Columbus Blue Jackets. For Panarin, the meeting with the “uniforms” is special: the striker spent a couple of years of his career in Ohio and instilled hope in local fans that he could become a club legend. But Artemy refused to stay in an American state that was not the most comfortable for living, for which he fell out of favor with Columbus fans.
Panarin already has quite a lot of similar meetings against his former club in the Rangers sweater. But today's game stands out from the rest. Even before it started, one big question hung in the air: “Will Panarin score?” And Artemy answered in the affirmative. And twice.
For the Rangers themselves, the game was very difficult and emotional. In the first two periods, the Blue Shirts and the Uniforms fought each other, as they say, at knifepoint and without a noticeable advantage for one of the teams. But Columbus was a little better in execution: the Blue Jackets opened the scoring, and then, when the Rangers evened it and even took the lead, with an interval of less than 20 seconds they turned the situation of their opponents on their head. And this brought the New York club many difficulties and problems. Until the very end of regulation time, the Rangers tried to break through the enemy's possession, but it was all in vain. Just 11 seconds before the third period buzzer, ever-promising Alexi Lafreniere saved the team from defeat by sending the game into overtime. It later spilled over into a shootout, where the same Lafreniere scored the winning shot.
Formally, it was Lafreniere who became the hero of the meeting, because in addition to the decisive shootout, he also scored two goals in regular time. The young Rangers forward scored both goals with the participation of Panarin — in both the first and second cases Artemy acted as an assistant. Khlebushka now has 24 points (8 goals and 16 assists) in 14 games. None of the Russian hockey players have that much this season. Even Nikita Kucherov. And Panarin is not so far from the leader of the overall scoring standings of the NHL championship — Elias Pettersson from Vancouver, who occupies the first line, is only one point ahead of the Russian.
Panarin, having scored an assist (and even two) in the match with Columbus, repeated a record that had not been seen in New York for more than half a century. In the 1972/73 season, Rod Gilbert became the leader in the history of the Rangers in the number of scoring matches in a row from the start of the championship. Then the Canadian forward scored in the first 14 games in a row. Today Panarin successfully repeated this achievement. Moreover, when Lafreniere scored his first goal in the match, he did not even celebrate, but first of all looked in Artemy’s direction to make sure that he was among the assistants.
In the next match, the Russian can stand on a par with Wayne Gretzky himself — in the 1996/97 season, the Greatest in the Rangers scored points in 15 matches in a row just during the championship. The absolute franchise record for such a long scoring streak belongs to Brian Leitch: in the 1991/92 season, he had a strike of 17 games with points in a row.
If Artemy achieves the next peak, he will automatically become the best among Russian hockey players ever history of their performances in the NHL. About 30 years ago, Dmitry Kvartalnov — then a player for the Boston Bruins, now the head coach of Dynamo Minsk — also scored points in 14 consecutive matches from the start of the season and until today held the record among Russians. Panarin repeated it, and at the end of the week he can beat him. The Rangers will have a little more than five days to rest and recover before meeting with the New Jersey Devils, who ruined the Blueshirts all last season and greatly influenced Panarin himself. After all, it was after the disastrous series of the last playoffs that Khlebushek literally plunged headlong into hockey, analyzing his own actions on the court. We see the result of this work right now.