That hadn’t been the case recently, though, at least not to most folks’ memory. Not until Peter Laviolette left the 33-year-old Kreider out of the lineup that faced the Devils on Monday, in the Rangers’ final game before the NHL’s holiday break.

The Chris Kreider move is the latest as the New York Rangers try to end their slump. Follow this tracker for the latest NHL news.

The decision to sit the longest tenured Ranger comes amid the club’s 4-12 skid and free fall in the standings to sixth in the Metropolitan Division and 22nd in the NHL.

His natural hat trick in the third period gave the Blueshirts an improbable Game 6 win at Carolina to advance to the Eastern Conference Final.

Day after day, the severity of their situation seemingly does nothing but weigh the Rangers down. Monday afternoon’s 5-0 disaster against the Devils at Prudential Center was no outlier.

The New York Rangers are a mess. Long-time Ranger Chris Kreider was a healthy scratch for Monday’s game. This comes after they traded their captain, Jacob Trouba, as well as the second-overall pick in the 2019 draft,

Kreider is currently in year 5 of a 7 year deal that sees him earning an average annual value of $6.5 million per season, and as a well respected NHL veteran, and one of the Rangers very best players in recent years, I suspect there would be a great deal of demand for his services if he were indeed to end up being traded.

Chris Kreider finally got the opportunity to speak out about getting scratched from the lineup during the New York Rangers’ Monday afternoon matchup against the New Jersey Devils. The Rangers had their first practice since the holiday break as Kreider was asked about his benching and he certainly did not shy away from the topic.

It’s hard to overstate the impact Chris Kreider has had on the New York Rangers. Kreider is the Rangers’ all-time playoff goal-scoring leader, for instance. He has spent his entire 13-year career on Broadway with the Blueshirts to this point.