Rangers' Mika Zibanejad pointless through first two games of season

The stat sheet for the Rangers’ game against the Utah Hockey Club on Saturday wasn’t kind to Mika Zibanejad: No goals, no assists, and under the plus/minus column, an unsightly minus-4.

But the numbers didn’t bother him, Zibanejad insisted.

“It bothers me that we lost the game,’’ he said Monday following the Rangers’ morning skate at Madison Square Garden, where they were preparing to host the Detroit Red Wings in their third game of the season.

“It's one game, but I still thought we battled hard to come back and get a point out of it,’’ he said. “We could have easily had a second point. We had some chances there. I had a chance right in front where the ‘D’ man blocks it. So, it could have been two points our way, and we'd be happy about the game."

It’s been a slow start for Zibanejad, the team’s No. 1 center. No points through the first two games, and only one shot on goal. He was, however, winning faceoffs at a 69.1% clip (second-best, among players who had taken more than 40 draws) entering Monday.

“Of course, you want to produce points and all that stuff,’’ he said. “The beginning is always . . . what people look at the most. What kind of start you get [off to]. But you go two games without scoring, or having a point, in the middle of the season, no one cares. You want to get off to a good start, but as a team, we have three out of four points. I'm trying to just do my thing. Hopefully, today is the day.’’

“I'm sure Mika wants to create,’’ Rangers coach Peter Laviolette said. “I do think his line [with wingers Chris Kreider and Reilly Smith] is creating. And so, I think it's a matter of time before he finds the scoresheet."

One of the early storylines involving Zibanejad has been the addition of Smith to his line with Kreider. Zibanejad and Kreider have been searching for a suitable right wing to complement them ever since Pavel Buchnevich was traded to St. Louis for salary-cap reasons in the summer of 2021. They had some success with trade deadline pickups — Frank Vatrano in 2022 and Vladimir Tarasenko (who is in the Red Wings’ lineup Monday) in 2023 — but haven’t had a consistent, long-term winger who has meshed with them.

They are hoping Smith, 33, can be that guy this season, but after spending all of training camp and the entire preseason together, the trio has yet to really take off, despite looking good at times.

“I think we're getting there,’’ Zibanejad said. “Sometimes it clicks right away and it's great. Everyone wants that. I think we're right there. I think there are a lot of good things that we have done, and we also continue talking.

“The only way we can get better is to keep working at it, and then being able to go back at the tape, come back to the games, and see, ‘OK, what can we do differently? What can we do more of?’ I thought we've been creating some chances."

“The first game, against Pittsburgh, I thought they were real good, that line,’’ Laviolette said. “They had had some really good moments in the exhibition [games] as well, where the line was good, the numbers were good, they were generating [offense], the [scoring] chances for where we wanted to be, [and] it was pretty tight defensively. They were doing a lot of good things.

“But it was a little bit off the mark [Saturday] with regard to some of the ways we defended,’’ he said. “And most of the [video] clips, you can't just point to one person and say, 'Well, this guy made a mistake.' It was a group effort, on what we could have done better.’’

Blue notes

Igor Shesterkin starts his third straight game. He pitched a shutout in his first game and allowed six goals and lost in OT in his second . . . After playing in the home opener Saturday, Matt Rempe was scratched for the second time in three games. D Chad Ruhwedel was the other scratch . . . D Ryan Lindgren, who remains on IR with an upper-body injury, took part in the morning skate wearing a regular full-contact jersey . . . Detroit has six former Rangers (Erik Gustafsson, Tarasenko, Patrick Kane, Andrew Copp, Tyler Motte and goalie Cam Talbot) on its roster.

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.