Just hours before the New York Rangers were set to begin their preseason schedule, they may have suffered a major setback involving one of their top players.
Star forward Artemi Panarin left Friday’s practice early with a lower-body injury and did not return.
Panarin paced the Rangers in both goals (37) and points (89) during the 2024-25 campaign, appearing in 80 games. Over his 550-game career with New York, he has averaged 0.43 goals and 1.28 points per contest, helping the team reach the Eastern Conference Final in 2022 and 2024.
He is also approaching the final year of the seven-year, $81.5 million deal he signed with the Rangers back in 2019, and is seeking a new contract.
New York opens its preseason slate on Sunday at 1 p.m. against the New Jersey Devils at Prudential Center.
How Bad Is Artemi Panarin’s Injury?
Friday marked only the second day of on-ice sessions for the Rangers, making Panarin’s inability to finish concerning.
However, new head coach Mike Sullivan downplayed the severity.
“He’s just day-to-day with a lower-body injury,” Sullivan told The Hockey News. “It’s more precautionary than anything. It’s so early in training camp, we just want to make sure we get ahead on anything that could potentially be on the radar.”
Why Is Artemi Panarin So Important To The Rangers?
Although Panarin wasn’t scheduled to suit up against the Devils, his injury casts uncertainty with the regular season only two and a half weeks away.
The veteran winger has appeared in at least 80 games in each of the last three years, including all 82 in 2023-24 when he produced a career-high 49 goals and 120 points while leading the Rangers back to the Eastern Conference Final.
Sullivan, who previously spent a decade behind the Pittsburgh Penguins’ bench, emphasized just how impactful Panarin is.
“What I can tell you is every time we played the Rangers and had our pre-scout conversations that he was on the film for a fair amount of it,” Sullivan said of Panarin, via The Hockey News. “I mean that with all due respect because of how talented he is and his ability to change a game. He’s a game-breaker in so many ways. There’s a number of players across the league that probably fall into that category, but there’s not a lot of them and he’s one of them.”
Panarin’s role becomes even more critical heading into 2025-26. Despite J.T. Miller’s midseason return after a trade from Vancouver, the roster has thinned out. Chris Kreider has moved on to Anaheim, Mika Zibanejad is aging and producing less, and the team’s youth pipeline is limited after Kaapo Kakko and Filip Chytil were dealt away.
That leaves Panarin and Miller as the Rangers’ most reliable cornerstones entering the season.