Jacob Trouba<\/a> who is also playing his first game back since he was traded to Anaheim just over a year ago. Trouba\u2019s road out of New York was rocky and since the physical defenseman played six seasons for Winnipeg, he doesn\u2019t have the lifetime Ranger vibe Kreider possessed until last June when the 2009 Rangers first-round draft pick \u00a0was shipped to the Ducks to reunite with Trouba in sunny California.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cI think coming back and seeing familiar faces and seeing friends in the city, that’s all great,” Trouba said. “I think there’s obviously the emotions that come with it. There’s not really a playbook for that and how to deal with it. I think I’ll also be excited when it’s over.”<\/p>\n
Kreider and Trouba will be joined by two more former Rangers with the Ducks \u2013 Ryan Strome and Frank Vatrano \u2013 both key factors in New York\u2019s run to the 2022 Eastern Conference Finals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One key figure in Monday night\u2019s hockey drama \u2013 Kreider\u2019s best friend as Ranger Mike Zibanejad \u2013 will not be on the ice as he will be scratched for missing a team meeting. Kreider and Zibanejad were teammates for nine seasons.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ducks coach Joel Quenneville has repeatedly praised the presence of Kreider, 34, and Trouba, 31, on the same roster with young Ducks such as 19-year-old Beckett Sennecke, the team\u2019s 20-year-old leading scorer Leo Carlsson and rising defenseman Jackson LaCombe, 24.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“They have both brought a lot to the table this year. They have played extremely well\u201d Quenneville said of Trouba and Kreider and their vast wealth of big-game experience. \u201cThey come to play hard and it’s appreciated. Trouba has logged way more minutes than we would have thought early in the year and Kreids gives us that netfront presence that was lacking last year.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
As far as the invariable emotional swirl that comes on a night wearing opposing colors on Garden ice for the former Rangers \u2013 particularly Kreider who also played 123 playoff games (with 48 goals) as a Ranger \u2013 the veteran coach knows what to expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cInternally I\u2019m sure they can\u2019t wait to get this one started,\u2019\u2019 he said. \u201cFans here are great. They are supportive in a lot of ways and I\u2019m sure it will be special for them. It\u2019s a meaningful game for us too \u2026 I\u2019m sure both teams will be excited to play this game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Allan Kreda<\/a>\u00a0is a New York-area sportswriter with bylines at The Associated Press and formerly of the New York Times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BY ALLAN KREDA, FOR THE SPORTING TRIBUNE NEW YORK \u2013 Chris Kreider mulled the question as he stood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,26,1717,401,10370,1719,51796,9095,896,6755,100,404,1722],"class_list":["post-95569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-ducks","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-chris-kreider","tag-hockey","tag-jacob-trouba","tag-joel-quenneville","tag-madison-square-garden","tag-mighty-ducks","tag-national-hockey-league","tag-new-york-rangers","tag-news","tag-nhl","tag-tst-los-angeles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}