Artemiy Panarin can already take home the current season of the National Hockey League as an asset regardless of how his New York Rangers perform in the playoffs. In one regular season, the Russian rewrote a huge number of historical records and achievements, became the absolute best player of the club and played, perhaps, the main role in the fact that the Blueshirts won the prize for the best team of the regular season.
Not once in his career in NHL Panarin did not reach the 100-point mark in one season, but this year the Russian not only conquered this peak — he stepped even higher.
Today, the Rangers played their last game in the championship and beat one of the outsiders of the championship, the Ottawa Senators. Even on the eve of the meeting, the Blueshirts declared Panarin the club's most valuable player in the regular season. Journalists made the choice in favor of Khlebushka. And they hardly had any alternatives: Artemy became the best sniper (49 goals), assistant (71 assists) and scorer (120 points) of his team. His title as the Rangers' Most Valuable Player is beyond doubt. And it was the chants «MVP! MVP! MVP!» Today the Russian was greeted by the entire Madison Square Garden arena in New York. But Khlebushek could have been the main contender for the title of best player of the season in the entire NHL, if not for Nikita Kucherov and Nathan MacKinnon with their stellar statistics and play.
Yes, Panarin was only three points short of repeating the club record held by Jaromir Jagr. The famous Czech scored 123 points for the Rangers in the 2005/06 season. However, this did not prevent Artemy from entering the list of greats. At a minimum, Khlebushek became only the second player in the history of the New York club who managed to score 120 points in one regular season in the NHL. For Russian hockey, this is also a great achievement. Previously, in the entire history of the league, the only Russians who scored 120 points or more in one NHL regular season were Nikita Kucherov (128 points in the 2018/19 season and 142 points in the current championship), Alexander Mogilny (127 points in the 1992/93 season ) and Sergei Fedorov (120 points in the 1993/94 season). Now Panarin has joined their list.
Artemy also caught up with Alexei Yashin in points for his entire career in the NHL championships (781) and shared 11th place with him in the ranking of Russian scorers in the history of the league. Already in the next season, Khlebushek can rise to two positions at once, alternately ahead of Sergei Gonchar (811 points) and Vyacheslav Kozlov (853). And there it’s not far from Ilya Kovalchuk (876), who, in addition to Panarin, will also be overtaken by Nikita Kucherov (871).
In the last regular season, the Rangers star did not close only one gestalt — the 50-goal mark . For this, Khlebushka was only one goal short.
“I had fun. And I was excited. This means a lot to me. Yes, I felt that I could score 50 goals, but…” said Artemy after today’s game with Ottawa. But now there will be a goal for the next championship. In the meantime, Panarin and his Rangers are all about the playoffs. After failure last season and a strong regular season, expectations for the Blueshirts' performance this year are higher than ever.
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