'Weird' game for former Ranger Chris Kreider in return to Madison Square Garden with the Ducks
Chris Kreider of the Anaheim Ducks acknowledges the Rangers crowd at MSG after a video tribute during the first period on Monday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
After Chris Kreider finished Monday’s morning skate at Madison Square Garden with the Anaheim Ducks, someone asked him if — after all those regular-season games, five conference finals and one Stanley Cup Final — there was a single moment that stood out for him in his 13 years in a Rangers jersey.
He grinned, in a way that implied, “Are you kidding me?’’
“That’s a hard one,’’ he said. “I don’t know.’’
Kreider, the Rangers’ all-time leader in playoff goals and power-play goals and the third-leading goal-scorer in franchise history, returned to the Garden on Monday for the first time since he was traded to the Ducks over the summer.
He said entering the building as a visitor was strange and that he was “just trying to get my bearings.’’ He had never been inside the visitor’s locker room before.
Kreider didn’t score in the Ducks’ 4-1 victory, but former Rangers captain Jacob Trouba, who also was playing his first game at the Garden since being traded to Anaheim, earned the second assist on Jackson LaCombe’s shorthanded goal that opened the scoring.
Afterward, Kreider described the game as “weird.’’
“It took me a couple shifts to realize that the guys in blue weren’t my teammates,’’ he said.
Referring to the 90-second tribute video the Rangers showed on the center ice scoreboard, Kreider said he missed most of it.
“Coach [Joel] Quenneville was talking to me about our neutral-zone play for most of it, so I missed, I think, like three-quarters of the video tribute,’’ he said. “But what I did see was awesome. Really grateful for the experience. . . . Really, really cool moment.’’
Trouba, who got a chance to visit his old neighborhood in Manhattan on Sunday, was asked before the game what he expected it to be like when he played at the Garden as a visitor for the first time since 2019.
“The only thing I can really compare it to is going back to Winnipeg for the first time,’’ said Trouba, who played five-plus seasons for the Rangers after coming over in a trade with the Jets in the summer of 2019. “But I think it’s a little bit different going back here, with just being the captain of the team. And all the memories and stories and everything that went into the last five, six years means a lot to me. . . . This place will always be special.’’
Ultimately, Trouba and Kreider were traded because the Rangers needed to find a way to keep themselves under the NHL’s $95.5 million salary cap this season. But general manager Chris Drury clearly wanted to refresh a roster that probably had run its course after conference finals appearances in 2022 and 2024.
When asked if he wished the Rangers had found some creative way to keep him, Kreider dodged the question.
“I try not to live in the past,’’ he said. “You don’t necessarily know if it is gonna be a good thing or a bad thing. So just take everything in stride.
“And playing in the National Hockey League, it doesn’t matter where you’re playing, is a tremendous, tremendous honor. Obviously, playing here is incredibly special, but the Anaheim experience has been fantastic. It’s just kind of been positive on all fronts.”
Trouba, who kept his apartment in Manhattan, said though he’s from Michigan and started his NHL career in Winnipeg, he had come to think of New York, where his son was born, as home. He said he and his wife most likely will return to the area, if not the city itself, when he is done playing.
Trouba added that the way his time with the Rangers ended — he was traded on Dec. 6, 2024, for defenseman Urho Vaakanainen and a conditional fourth-round pick — won’t affect the fondness he feels for his time in New York.
“The way it ended is how it ended,’’ he said. “At the end of the day, you’re a hockey player, and this is the job I signed up for. So yeah, I think it’s unfortunate, I guess I’ll say, and I didn’t enjoy it in the moment. But I think it’s kind of just a small piece of what was a very, very memorable and impactful 5 1⁄2 years for me.’’
Both players went to visit former teammate Mika Zibanejad over the weekend, Kreider said. Zibanejad ended up not playing Monday night, as he was suspended by coach Mike Sullivan for missing a team meeting.
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.
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