The New York Rangers’ Mika Zibanejad is stopped on a shot by Ottawa Senators’ goalie Craig Anderson during Game 3 of their second-round playoff series on Tuesday, May 2, 2017.Frank Franklin II/The Associated Press
Okay, so he's not Russian.
He is, in fact, half-Iranian, half-Swedish – but all the same, Churchill's wry line about Russia seems also to fit Mika Zibanejad: "A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
The 24-year-old Ranger, who has so often left coaches slapping their foreheads and general managers scratching their heads, was such a force Tuesday night in New York that it seemed, at times, as though he might be the only player who had remembered to get his skates sharpened.
It was Zibanejad who led the first charge up the ice and had the first good chance on Ottawa Senators goaltender Craig Anderson. It was Zibanejad who set up the Rangers' first goal by carrying the puck up the ice, circling the net and sending the puck out to linemate Mats Zuccarello, allowing Zuccarello to give the Rangers a lead they would never relinquish. It was Zibanejad who wore the best player's "Broadway Hat" in the Rangers dressing room following the team's decisive 4-1 victory in Game 3 and tried to deflect praise every direction but his own.
But praise was due. He had more shots, six, than any player on either side. He was the fastest; his line, Zuccarello on one wing, Chris Kreider on the other, was dominant from start to finish.
Such a performance could have been used by the Ottawa Senators, who seemed lost and unfocused in what has to go down as their worst game of the postseason.
The thing is, right up until July 18 of last summer, Zibanejad was an Ottawa Senator, until the team gave up on the big, 6-foot-2, 215-pound centre by sending him and a second-round pick in next year's entry draft to the Rangers for Derick Brassard and a seventh-round pick in that same draft.
The Senators had originally drafted the Swedish player a high sixth overall in the 2011 draft.
He showed enough promise at his first training camp that they kept him around for a while before returning him to his team in Sweden, Djurgardens IF, where they hoped he would develop more.
The Senators were over-the-moon ecstatic when, months later, Zibanejad led Team Sweden to the gold medal in the world juniors held in Calgary, the big, quick-skating kid gobbling up a Russian turnover at the blueline and bursting in to score the winning goal, the game's only goal, on a fancy backhand at the 10:09 mark of overtime.
It would be wrong to say he never worked out, but not at all wrong to say that he never worked out quite as the Ottawa Senators had imagined he would. He struggled and spent time in the minors, but then in his last two seasons scored 20 and 21 goals, enough to make him attractive to the Rangers, even with a salary hit this year of $3.25-million.
The Senators were happy to make the trade, even though the Ottawa fan base had grown a soft spot for the easy-going, shy – even sweet – Zibanejad. The organization had lost faith in his hockey sense. Great skill, wonderful skater, big body – but how much of the ice did he see? They saw him fade in and out of games and, in the end, lost confidence in him. He, not surprisingly, lost even more confidence in himself.
The Rangers seemed a nice new beginning. A more established team where he could apprentice rather than star. Yet, barely a month into his new start he crashed into the boards during a game against the Florida Panthers and suffered a broken left leg.
It made for a rather discouraging regular season: 26 games missed, only 14 goals and 23 assists – last among the regulars.
Now, nine games into the postseason, he has a goal and six assists for seven points – first among the regulars.
As open a book as there might be in hockey, Zibanejad has spoken of his failed confidence, of his work with sports psychologists, of what works and what doesn't work for him.
"When I play on my instincts more than try to think out there," he candidly told New York reporters after Tuesday's dominant performance, "[it] works better for me. I'm not as passive – something that has been brought up before. That's what I'm trying to [do] with my game there – and it seems to be working."
Rangers head coach Alain Vigneault seemed to agree when he met with the media on Wednesday. Vigneault talked about the importance of work ethic and about how the best players all exhibit good "off-ice skills" as well as their obvious on-ice talents.
"I think Mika is starting to grasp that," Vigneault said. "Obviously, right now there's a lot of pressure. In the last little while he's managed it well and he's getting better.
"We're going to be sitting here in a couple of years either saying, 'He was a real good player' or we're going to be saying, 'He never quite figured it out.' "
For the moment, however, he certainly appears to have figured something out, especially when working with the highly creative Zuccarello.
"He makes it so much easier for me to play," says Zibanejad of his winger.
He also knows that one good game, one good series, even one good playoffs, cannot erase the doubts and concerns that have trailed him since he was drafted so high.
"It's just one game," he said of Tuesday's win. "Now we have to win another one."