MIKA ZIBANEJAD JOINS NY RANGERS -- FIRST MEDIA DAY

MIKA ZIBANEJAD JOINS NY RANGERS -- FIRST MEDIA DAY

By: Matthew Blittner

On July 18th, 2016 news broke about the Rangers trading Centre Derick Brassard to the Senators for Centre Mika Zibanejad.

The Rangers hope that Zibanejad will come into his own and provide scoring equal to Brassard and play more defensively responsible, especially on the penalty kill.

Friday August 5th, 2016 the Rangers and Zibanejad held their annual media day before the start of training camp, yours truly provided the coverage.

ON BEING TRADED TO RANGERS: Zibanejad, like everybody else, was initially surprised at the news that Ottawa had traded him to the Rangers. As an attempt to break the ice with the New York reporters, Zibanejad offered, “I had just moved into my newly built house in Ottawa, of course I wasn’t expecting to be traded.” When questioned about how welcoming his new teammates have been, Zibanejad replied, “several guys reached out to me when the news first broke. Girardi, Mac, Staal, Lundqvist and J.T. were the ones to initially reach out to me.”

THOUGHTS ON HIS ROLE WITH THE RANGERS: “i’m just looking to be one of the guys. I can play on the penalty kill, and create scoring chances on the power play. Up in Ottawa, it seemed like our power play and penalty kill were inconsistent at times. There would be games where they worked great, and games where we couldn’t get it together. Honestly, I’m just looking for more consistency out of myself. I know that this year can be my year, people have been waiting for me to break out, and I feel this can be the year, I just need to be more consistent. I’m sort of familiar with the Rangers system from playing against them, I just need to adjust to playing in it. It’s definitely a system that works to my strengths.”

HIS RELATIONSHIPS WITH HIS NEW TEAMMATES: Zibanejad stated that he didn’t really know Brassard that well, but knew that he was a good guy and he wishes him well in Ottawa. Zibanejad went on to say, “Really the only guy on the team that I knew beforehand was J.T. we played together when we were 17.” When asked about who he hoped to play with on his line, Zibanejad said, “honestly, i’m just trying to build chemistry with everybody, whoever the coaches want me to play with, I’ll play with.”

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