\u201cIt\u2019s basically how I evaluate myself: Are you driving the play or not? Or are you just out there?\u201d Miller said. \u201cI was just kind of wasting energy, it felt like. I couldn\u2019t get into rhythm and timing.\u201d<\/p>\n
It amplified questions about the wisdom of committing to a volatile 32-year-old who\u2019s been traded three times \u2014 including once previously from New York \u2014 but Miller has been on a noticeable upswing of late.<\/p>\n
After registering only nine points through his first 20 games, he\u2019s matched that total with a point-per-game pace in his last nine contests. Still, Miller pushed back on the notion that his improvement started around that marker, saying, \u201cI don\u2019t even think it\u2019s the last (nine games). I might have had points in those games, but I wasn\u2019t driving play.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his mind, the turnaround began just last week. His coach, Mike Sullivan, fully concurred.<\/p>\n
\u201cJ.T.\u2019s last few games are amongst his best that he\u2019s had all year long,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cThere were a few instances where you\u2019re watching from the bench, and the feeling I get is that, \u2018He\u2019s in a beast mode.\u2019 When he\u2019s possessing the puck in the offensive zone, using his size and his physical stature to protect pucks and roll off the pressure and look for that next play, he\u2019s hard to handle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Complementary skill sets for the top six<\/p>\n
Miller pointed to a few factors, starting with his deployment.<\/p>\n
For nearly two full months, New York\u2019s top-six forwards were in flux. Underperforming veterans and suspect overall depth made it a slog to generate offense, which, along with a 14-game injury absence for Vincent Trocheck, forced Sullivan to constantly juggle his lines. Recently, though, he may have landed on combinations that work.<\/p>\n
Miller has joined forces with Trocheck and Conor Sheary, with that trio primarily functioning as the Rangers\u2019 matchup line. They spent nearly every shift in Saturday\u2019s 3-2 overtime loss to the NHL-leading Colorado Avalanche<\/a>\u00a0going head-to-head with Hart Trophy front-runner Nathan MacKinnon and held their own, with the lines battling to a 1-1 push.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a challenge that Miller relishes \u2014 \u201cHow do you not get up for that?\u201d he asked, smiling \u2014 and has accepted as often, if not more, than any other forward in the league. His 2.65 quality-of-competition rating, a stat from Hockey Stat Cards that measures the difficulty of every shift based on opponent, grades out as the NHL\u2019s toughest draw.<\/p>\n \u201cYou work your whole life and your young career to get to a point where you can go out and try to shut down the best players in the world,\u201d he said. \u201cWe take a lot of pride in that, and it\u2019s not going to go great all the time. It\u2019s really hard to keep guys off the (score) sheet, but I feel like we at least understand that if we can limit the easy chances for the other team, we can keep the juice down for them and play the game we want to play.\u201d<\/p>\n Consequently, New York\u2019s top line of Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad and Alexis Lafreni\u00e8re has been freed up to hunt for offense against lesser competition. It\u2019s created two lines that have differing strengths and seem to complement each other well.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir line is a puck-possession-through-the-neutral-zone game, and they create a lot of plays,\u201d Miller said. \u201cOur line does it the other way. It\u2019s in our DNA just to kind of play a little straighter and to come up with pucks and be close on the forecheck. We get our offense by wearing teams down in the D-zone and playing a north-south type thing, and that\u2019s OK. We should be able to score different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
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