At face value, Panarin’s 2025-26 season implies a player in steep decline. His 36 points in 37 games is a sub-point-per-game trend unbecoming of a supposed “superstar.” The Russian has not ended a season producing at a rate that low since 2016-17, and it’s far off the mark of his 120-point season just two years ago.<\/p>\n
No doubt, Panarin’s game has dropped to an extent, but the underwhelming point production says more about what’s happening around him. The Rangers are the second-lowest-scoring team at 5v5 in the NHL, with a 2.00 goals-per-60 rate. Yet the team is scoring 3.15 goals per 60 with Panarin on the ice. It’s a high level of offense, even if not quite matching the pinnacle of his NHL career. <\/p>\n
Top players may shift from controlling all aspects of play to being offensive-zone opportunists in the latter stages of their careers. This would not be a fair assessment of Panarin at 33 years old, however.<\/p>\n
The numbers align with a near-consensus among anyone who has watched the Rangers this season. Panarin is on an island as an offensive catalyst. The team is indebted to him in all aspects: carrying play through the neutral zone, establishing offensive-zone possessions, and providing dual-threat capabilities as both a passer and a shooter. <\/p>\n
He remains one of the NHL’s top creators of offense, and the Rangers, frankly, have no other player who comes even close. Panarin has produced a point on 37.9 percent of the Rangers’ goals this season, which is the ninth-highest share among NHL players. His contribution percentage is proportional to that of Nikita Kucherov in Tampa Bay or Mikko Rantanen in Dallas. With better help around him, Panarin’s point totals would almost certainly be higher.<\/p>\n
Is Panarin the Hart Trophy finalist of 2020? At age 33, he is not. He remains one of the NHL’s best individual offensive creators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At face value, Panarin’s 2025-26 season implies a player in steep decline. His 36 points in 37 games…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-364352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}