GRABBING HIS CHANCE
Grabner Rangers’ best scorer in first season with team
The seeds for Michael Grabner’s spectacular season with the Rangers were planted in Toronto last season. Mike Babcock could see it coming.
“He was on his way,” the Maple Leafs coach said Thursday morning. “He had so many chances. He was snakebitten, but he got his confidence back. Grabs was a guy we really liked here. He did a real good job for us. We would’ve loved to have kept him, but we felt with the wingers we had coming, one of these young kids wouldn’t have got any ice time.”
Toronto’s youth movement paved the way for Grabner’s road to New York, where the 29-year-old speedster has already posted the second-highest goal total of his career. He takes a team-best 21 goals into Sunday afternoon’s game in Detroit, the most since he put up 34 with the Islanders in 2010-11, the second season of his career.
“I think he’s lived up to expectations and beyond,” Rick Nash said of Grabner. “I think for us always playing against him with the Islanders, we kind of knew what he could do and what he could bring. But I think he’s been our best goalscorer and it’s been impressive to watch. He gets four or five breakaways every night. He’s just so fast. The one thing that I was surprised with is how well he uses his stick to lure guys into thinking they have room and time to make a pass, and he takes it away in less than a second.”
A bunch of Grabner’s goals have come through that smart stick-work, leading to two-on-ones or breakaways. He has created many chances on the penalty kill, where the Rangers were tied entering Saturday for the NHL lead with seven shorthanded goals after netting three all last year.
Yet surprisingly, Grabner’s pivotal shorthanded goal Thursday night in Toronto to put the Rangers up 4-2 with 5:03 remaining was only his first shorthanded goal of the season.
“Really?” Nash asked. “That is hard to believe.”
After five seasons with the Islanders, the last of which he managed just 34 games after October 2014 hernia surgery, the Isles traded Grabner to Toronto, where he produced 18 points in 80
RANGERS at RED WINGS 12:30 p.m. on NBC
games. Babcock said assistant D.J. Smith, who runs Toronto’s penalty kill, was “begging” for the Leafs to keep Grabner before he signed a two-year, $3.3 million deal with the Rangers.
“I was kind of (able to) rediscover myself I guess,” Grabner said of his one season with the Leafs. “It was nice to come in here and get some opportunity to play. I didn’t score as much as I wanted last year, but I think overall I had a great time (in Toronto.)”
Grabner began Saturday leading the league with 20 even-strength goals and is on pace for a new career-high.
“Players get a little swagger and they get a good feel for their game and a good feel for their release,” said Alain Vigneault, who coached Grabner in his rookie season with Vancouver in 2009-10. “He’s seeing the net, seeing the holes and putting it in, and for us it’s real good.”