{"id":71353,"date":"2025-12-15T18:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T18:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/71353\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T18:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T18:56:08","slug":"rangers-bench-mika-zibanejad-after-missed-team-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/71353\/","title":{"rendered":"Rangers bench Mika Zibanejad after missed team meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chris Kreider and Mika Zibanejad reunion on the Madison Square Garden ice will have to wait.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Zibanejad will not play against the Ducks Monday night because he missed a team meeting in the morning, Rangers head coach Mike Sullivan revealed after the team skated in Tarrytown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"MikaMika Zibanejad will not play in the Ducks-Rangers matchup on Dec. 15, 2025. AP<\/p>\n

\u201cMika and I had a conversation about it,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cThere are logistical challenges this city presents sometimes, but having said that, I think Mika understands the importance of the rules that we all expect of one another. This is something that, I think, from his standpoint, obviously, he feels terribly. The one thing about Mika is he\u2019s an honest person. He\u2019s a great human being. He takes responsibility for it. It\u2019s certainly not something that we would like to happen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut having said that, we believe strongly in the process that we have in place. The process that we have I think is important for everyone to understand what the expectations are. Mika understands that as a leader of the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coincidentally falling on the same day as Kreider\u2019s first game against his former team since he was traded to Anaheim this past offseason<\/a>, the ex-Blueshirt won\u2019t get to square off against his best friend and the best man in his wedding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a result, the Rangers will be without one of their top forwards as they take on the No. 2 team in the Pacific Division.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Zibanejad has appeared in all 33 games up until this point, scoring a team-leading 11 goals and dishing 14 assists. Since appearing in all 56 games of the truncated 2020-21 campaign, the Swede missed only two games in each of the following four seasons.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Without Zibanejad, the Rangers activated Matt Rempe off long-term injured reserve. Sullivan called Rempe a game-time decision, but all signs point to the 6-foot-9 forward drawing back into the lineup since he suffered a hand injury on Oct. 23.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chris Kreider and Mika Zibanejad reunion on the Madison Square Garden ice will have to wait.\u00a0 Zibanejad…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7187,9,11,10,541,539,319],"class_list":{"0":"post-71353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-mika-zibanejad","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-news","12":"tag-new-york-rangers","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}