Mind games
Kreider says struggles last year were because of overthinking
The mission hasn’t changed for Chris Kreider, but it appears as though the 25-year-old power winger’s mindset has changed in his approach to the upcoming 2016-17 season.
“Nothing changes from what I should have been doing last year and what I will be doing this year,” Kreider said Wednesday at the club’s practice rink after helping out on the ice at the Rangers Youth Hockey Camp. “It’s being big, strong, fast, mean, imposing and getting to the net and playing a power forward’s game — north-south.
“I know the player I want to be going forward so I can try to have an impact on a nightly basis.”
It isn’t complicated. Kreider, who agreed to a four-year contract Friday worth $4.625 million per year, has the size, speed and strength to thrive in a straight-line game as a net presence nightly and on a shift-by-shift basis.
Somehow, though, the objective has often gotten lost in translation as Kreider, notorious for internalizing, has been prone to overthinking matters. That tendency undermined his game through the opening months of last season to the extent he told The Post on Nov. 28, “I don’t think things could have gone more poorly.”
“I think there was a lot that probably got into my head that shouldn’t have when things might not be going your way and you have those expectations to produce,” Kreider said Wednesday. “You can be playing well with the puck not going in, and the next thing you know, you’re not playing well the puck’s not going in.”
Kreider finished in a rush, getting five goals in six games before going scoreless in the final two to match his career best of 21 goals set the previous season — and that was without converting on a breakaway until March 26 in Montreal in Game 75 of the season.
Kreider’s inability to break out on the score sheet was secondary to his failure to play with authority on a consistent basis. There were too many nights when you didn’t see Kreider on the ice, let alone the score sheet. There is no doubt he recognizes that.
“I’ve looked at my last year, I’ve gone over it, and I’ve moved beyond it,” Kreider said. “But if I were going to talk about it a lit- tle bit in retrospect, I probably spread myself too thin and got away from the player I know I am.”
The amateur psychiatrists in the room theorize Kreider stopped crashing the net because of the spotlight placed on him in the aftermath of the infamous Carey Price incident in Game 1 of the 2014 conference finals in which he skidded into and injured the Montreal goaltender on a breakaway after his skate was clipped by chasing defenseman Alexei Emelin.
Now, though, Kreider — an effective net presence on the power play who was on for 16 of the club’s 20 power-play goals after Christmas — is vowing to be relentless driving to the net off the rush and getting in on the forecheck.
“It’s about simplifying my game and relying on the physical attributes I know I have,” said the 6foot-3, 226-pound specimen, who has split his time between New York and his Boston digs this summer. “I don’t have specific goals, but I do have a mission to perform every single day.”