
It’s very, very easy now to look back at the July 18, 2016 trade between the Rangers and Senators and pronounce a clear winner in that deal. Mika Zibanejad took a couple of seasons after Jeff Gorton acquired him from Ottawa to find his place on an evolving Rangers roster but he’s been the team’s No. 1 center for four-plus years, a star who has only shone brighter with each passing season.
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Derick Brassard was, for a time, the Rangers’ No. 1 center before Gorton sent him to Ottawa that summer day seven years ago. The Rangers were trying to find ways to give themselves salary-cap flexibility coming off a first-round playoff exit, their earliest in four years; the Senators were trying to find a bigger, veteran presence on a team loaded with young talent.
“People kind of forget we had some good pieces then,” Bobby Ryan said of the Sens. “We were missing one or two things and Brass filled a need for sure.”
So much so that Gorton got Senators GM Pierre Dorion to send the Rangers a 2018 second-round pick as well — the Rangers packaged that pick and a 2017 third-rounder for Brendan Smith at the trade deadline six months after the Zibanejad deal.
For Zibanejad, the trade represented a fresh start even at the age of 23. He had back-to-back 20-goal seasons with the Senators but even he could feel that the organization, which was loaded with young talent (Erik Karlsson, Jean-Gabriel Pageau, Mark Stone and Mike Hoffman were all under 25), wasn’t seeing enough from him.
“I was in Ottawa for five years and I was maybe not getting to where they thought I should be,” Zibanejad said. “It was refreshing. I came from a Canadian market with a lot of pressure, a lot of media around. It was an adjustment I had to make.”
Ryan was close with Zibanejad for the three seasons they were together in Ottawa and sees that trade as the key for his old friend.
“Mika’s the player he is now because he left (Ottawa),” Ryan said. “Sometimes you need a change of scenery to become the player and person you need to be, and that was definitely Mika in Ottawa. The expectations were sky high for him, too high honestly. I don’t think it ever would have happened for him if he stayed there.”
The effect on the Rangers was immediate too. This was 18 months before The Letter, before all the core pieces from the 2012-2016 group were dealt away in a major rebuild. It was an opportunity for Gorton and the Rangers to get a young player on the rise, but at a big cost to the group that remained — Brassard was immensely popular among his Rangers teammates and they took his departure hard.
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“It was a bit of a shock, no doubt,” Marc Staal said. “We had accomplished a lot together.”
Zibanejad’s first Rangers season had some ups and downs — he missed two months with a broken leg — but the team was still strong, finishing with 102 points in the first wild-card spot. Zibanejad was healthy for the playoffs and his Game 5 overtime winner in Montreal helped send the Rangers on to the second round… Where the Senators awaited.
“When (Clarke) MacArthur scored the OT winner for them in Boston in Game 6 I was just like, ‘Oh, shit, not like this,'” Zibanejad said, laughing. “It was just a weird situation.”
And the irony of it all went deeper: The Rangers outplayed the Sens but the Rangers’ playoff spell was broken by some of Zibanejad’s closest friends in his old organization. Karlsson had a standout series, Pageau had a killer four-goal Game 2 and Brassard, always best when the playoffs rolled around, scored a huge tying goal with 1:26 left in Game 5 before Kyle Turris won it in OT to leave the Rangers just about done.
It was also, of course, the last playoff series Zibanejad and the Rangers would play until this past spring. The Senators pushed the Penguins to double-overtime of Game 7 before falling — and they haven’t stopped falling since. Brassard was dealt at the following deadline and played for a head-spinning six teams in four years before signing back in Ottawa this season.
“We were a goal away,” Ryan said. “I definitely thought at times after that — maybe a couple years later when all that was left was me, Zack Smith and Craig Anderson — that if we go to the Finals, we keep everyone together, we go on a bit of a run. Brass was the player we needed then.”
And Zibanejad’s dedication to himself on and off the ice his first few years in New York has resulted in huge heights. His 333 points in 327 games since the start of the 2018-19 season are among the top 25 players in the league over that span; his 65 power-play goals are fourth, just one behind Alex Ovechkin. Not since Mark Messier’s days patrolling the Garden ice have the Rangers had such a clear No. 1 center who plays in every key situation and backs it up with numbers.
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“He was just at that tipping point when he got to us,” Staal said. “He had to put in the work and he did. He’s never looked back.”
“I’m so glad it was him that left, honestly,” Ryan said. “He’s become just what we thought he could be and he had to get out of Ottawa to do it. Not so great for Senators fans I guess, but I’m so happy for Mika. He’s where he’s supposed to be.”
(Photo: Bob Frid / USA TODAY Sports)
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