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Chris Kreider captured the hearts of Rangers fans, and some team records along the way

Published 1 day ago3 minute read

Chris Kreider has not won a Stanley Cup.

He has not led the league in goals or assists or points. He has not won a major NHL award. He has made only two All-Star games. He has not been a captain.

He never crossed over into mainstream celebrity, like Henrik Lundqvist did. He spoke softly, sometimes cryptically, always philosophically.

On paper, he was just a guy who spent parts of 14 seasons with the Rangers, a good but not great player who became part of the New York sports furniture.

But Rangers fans know better.

Kreider, who was traded to the Ducks on Thursday for a 20-year-old named Casey Terrance, has been and will be a part of the team’s historical fabric.

He was tough, reliable and loyal, a power play fixture in front of the net and a penalty killer who scored shorthanded goals as a hobby.

His name is all over the team’s record book, especially in playoff production.

Once, he was a promising 20-year-old himself, when he joined the team out of Boston College for its 2012 run to the Eastern Conference finals.

Now he is 34 and it is time to go, in a trade most fans knew was coming and most accept as the right move by general manager Chris Drury.

The roster needs to be freshened up, and this was an obvious move in that direction, with Kreider and his $6.5 million salary cap hit headed west to rejoin former teammates Jacob Trouba, Ryan Strome and Frank Vatrano.

Kreider was the last remaining member of the 2014 Stanley Cup Final team and is the most recent member of the team’s early 2020s core to depart.

Will it be odd seeing him in an Anaheim uniform? Of course.

But far stranger things have happened in the history of long-term New York-area stars who have headed elsewhere late in their careers.

You know the list. Start with Babe Ruth and go from there.

Only a heart ailment kept Lundqvist, the Rangers’ best player this century, from playing for the Washington Capitals.

This is the business they’ve chosen.

But nothing that happens with the Ducks or anywhere else will make Kreider anything but a Ranger in the minds of fans for decades to come.

His on-ice moments are too many to list here. So let’s focus on a memorable one off the ice, an only-in-hockey scene from last year.

Kreider had scored three consecutive goals against the Hurricanes in Raleigh in the third period of Game 6 of a second-round series. The Rangers won, 5-3, to advance to the conference finals for the second time in three years.

When he returned to his suburban home, he found celebratory hats strewn on his front lawn. He was pictured the next morning, picking up the hats himself and putting them in a tote bag, either for disposal or as a memento.

Kreider did not love the fact his home was pictured publicly, but for fans, it was a one-of-us image that further bonded him with the community.

Come 2024-25, though, his production tailed off, and Drury dangled him as trade bait last autumn. On Thursday, the deal finally went down.

The numbers speak for themselves. Kreider is the third-leading goal-scorer in team history with 326 and the leader in playoff goals with 48.

He played in 1,006 combined games in the regular season and playoffs.

But Kreider’s stay in New York was about more than numbers. He did not win a Stanley Cup, but he leaves town a winner.

Neil Best

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.

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