UP, UP & BLAIS
Injury-shortened Rangers debut has winger eager to get rolling this year
Sammy Blais is looking forward.
The ACL tear that prematurely ended his first season with the Rangers after just 14 games is in the past. He even politely declined to get into the clear-as-day, dirty slew-foot from former Devils defenseman P.K. Subban that kept him from playing a part in the Rangers’ best season in seven years, which included a thrilling battle to the conference final. For Blais, it’s all about picking up where he left off and capitalizing on another opportunity to bring his game to an NHL team with Stanley Cup aspirations.
“I’m going to be ready to go,” Blais told The Post in a recent phone interview. “So when I start training camp, I have to be myself and have to be the same player I was before.”
Rangers president and general manager Chris Drury re-signed Blais — who came to New York as the feature return in the July 2021 trade that sent Pavel Buchnevich to St. Louis — to a one-year, $1.525 million deal at the beginning of this offseason. It was a $25,000 bump for a player who only had a sample size of games in the red, white and blue jersey — but that indicates just how highly Drury and head coach Gerard Gallant think of the 26-year-old wing.
“He’s played in the league for a while,” Gallant said of Blais, who was the Blues’ 176th-overall pick in the 2014 draft. “He’s mostly been a fourth-line guy in St. Louis, a little bit up on the third line, but he’s one of those guys who has real good hands, as we see, and he’s a big power forward.”
Blais admitted it was nerve-racking to suffer the first knee injury of his career at the beginning of what was a contract year, but the toughest part of the rehab was not being around the team as much as he would’ve liked. He made a conscious effort to be a part of the season as much as he could.
Once he was able to walk well, Blais attended most home games. When the team was practicing at the training center in Tarrytown, Blais always worked out at the same time. Though he missed out on some road trips during the regular season, the Rangers brought Blais along to St. Louis in mid-March so he could see his former teammates and visit the organization with which he spent the first four seasons of his NHL career.
Blais then traveled with the Rangers in playoffs, beginning with the Carolina series, when he started skating with the team at morning skates.
“I wanted to prove to everyone that they made a good choice trading for me, and it was really, really hard to be away from the team,” Blais said. “I didn’t get as close with the guys as I wanted to, so it was kind of hard for that and being away from the game. But I’m doing good now. I’m just looking forward to get back on the ice with the guys at training camp.”
Asked if he felt pressure to prove he was a good return in a trade for Buchnevich, who was a Ranger for five seasons and a lineup staple, Blais said he didn’t look at it like that.
“When I got traded, they told me they really liked the way I played and that they needed that on the Rangers,” he said. “For me, I was just coming here to do my job and play like I was playing in St. Louis. That’s what they wanted me to do, and I’m going to keep doing the same.”
Blais, who went home to Quebec for a couple of weeks before returning to spend a majority of his summer in New York, had been skating on the right wing of the top line next to Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider when he got hurt. Though he was brought in primarily to serve in a bottom-six role, Blais proved to have
a soft set of hands to go along with his blue-collar style of play.
In addition to 17 penalty minutes, Blais dished out four assists and put up 17 shots in 14 games while strengthening the Rangers’ forecheck and play along the walls.
“His physicality [and] his compete level is what we all want to play like,” teammate Barclay Goodrow said of Blais earlier in the season. “It’s what I think our group has been striving to be. He’s one of the hardest hitters I’ve ever seen, to be honest. He’s a guy that D-men don’t want to play against, and that’s kind of infectious throughout the group.”
Blais should be a bottom-six option once again for the 2022-23 season, which will kick off at the end of September with the start of training camp. Gallant, however, likes to add grittier players to the top two units, which he did with with both Blais and Goodrow last season.
Part of the reason why Blais landed on the top line was Alexis Lafreniere’s inability to secure the spot. That’s not to say Lafreniere won’t be able to earn the job this season, but the Rangers are certainly hoping the former firstoverall pick will be able to in order to keep Blais in the bottom six and in turn balance out the lineup.
“To be honest, I think we have everything here,” Blais said when asked for his evaluation of the Rangers. “I think last year, I was obviously not playing, but I was watching all the games. They were playing really good and watching them play, I was like, ‘We really have a good team here, and I want to be a part of it.’ But I think just keep working hard and I think if we do that, we can beat any team in this league.”