The New York Rangers did plenty this summer to help their playoff case, but one new national ranking is another reminder that the biggest question around this team still hasn’t gone away.
The Athletic’s latest tiered rankings of NHL top-six center pairs slotted Mika Zibanejad and J.T. Miller 19th overall, placing them in Tier 6, labeled “Below-average.” That puts the Rangers’ duo behind the Winnipeg Jets’ Mark Scheifele and Viggo Björck/Adam Lowry and just ahead of Dylan Strome and Pierre-Luc Dubois of the Washington Capitals.
The placement isn’t exactly shocking given where both players are in their careers. Zibanejad was much better last season, finishing with 34 goals and 78 points after a down year before that.
Miller, meanwhile, missed time and finished with 53 points in 68 games. Both are also on the wrong side of 30, with Zibanejad turning 33 in April and Miller 33 in March, meaning each will be 34 by season’s end.
What the ranking really underscores is the hole the Rangers still need to fill down the middle. As long as Igor Shesterkin is in goal and Adam Fox is anchoring the blue line, the expectation remains a Stanley Cup chase. Hiring Mike Sullivan only sharpened that focus, and the front office’s summer work showed it knows the roster had to improve.
Still, there’s only so much one offseason can fix. The Rangers still lack a true No. 1 center, even after adding Noah Laba as a sophomore skater and bringing in Cole Beaudoin in the Vincent Trocheck trade. Neither looks like the kind of centerpiece the team has been searching for.
That’s why the Zibanejad-Miller ranking matters beyond the number itself. If Zibanejad were sliding into a No. 2 role and Miller into No. 3, the whole picture would look different.
Zibanejad no longer looks like the player he was in his prime, but production like 30 goals and 70-plus points from a second-line center would be a major asset. Miller has shown he can still drive offense, too, but the concern is whether last season was an injury-hit blip or the start of a real decline.
There’s also the age factor, and the injury history that comes with it. Miller’s main issue was his groin, and that will be worth watching as the season unfolds. Chris Drury knows better than most how quickly a career can change at this stage; the Rangers’ president and GM saw his own playing career end at 34 in 2010-11 because of a chronic degenerative left knee condition and other nagging injuries.
For now, the Rangers will try to prove the outside noise wrong. Zibanejad and Miller are both prideful players, and if they can regain some of what they’ve shown in the past, it would go a long way. But the real boost would come if Drury can eventually land that true No. 1 center, pushing both veterans into lower-leverage roles and giving the roster the kind of depth it still needs.
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