Ex-Canucks
For the Canucks faithful who remain fans of J.T. Miller in one way or another, he’ll be a fascinating watch over the next couple of months as his New York Rangers try to pull themselves out of the Eastern Conference depths and turn themselves into the playoff team everyone expected.
They’re presently five points back of the two wild card teams, the Detroit Red Wings and the Columbus Blue Jackets, with three other teams to hop over in the race.
The 31-year-old lefty is centering the top line with Artemi Panarin, who Miller referred to as a special player, on one side, and Mika Zibanejad, who Miller played with his first time with the Rangers, on the other.
J.T. was drafted by New York in 2011 and played 341 games with the club before being traded to the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2018.
So far, so good on a personal level. Miller has played two games with the Broadway Blueshirts; one loss, one win. He had a busy box score in Saturday’s 6-3 loss to the Boston Bruins. Two goals, one of them on the power play, six shots-on-goal, three hits and a blocked shot in 18:48 of ice time.
The very next day, Miller turned around and added two assists, five hits, and two shots-on-goal in a 4-2 victory over the Vegas Golden Knights. It snapped the Rangers three-game skid. Miller also turned things around in the face-off circle, winning almost 67-percent of his draws compared to less than 37-percent the game before.
“Fortunately we’re just playing hockey,” Miller said after the win, in regards to adjusting to moving over from the Canucks,”I spent my first two days at the rink basically, so trying to learn on the fly at the rink right now. Everyone’s been very helpful, the coach has been awesome filling me in, and also just letting me play a little bit, which is fun trying to learn new guys’ tendencies.”
The biggest difference for Miller is going from playing with a fellow top centre he apparently couldn’t stand, Elias Pettersson of the Canucks, to one of his best friends in hockey, Vinnie Trocheck.
The two grew up together playing youth hockey in the Pittsburgh Hornets program, before going their separate ways at the junior levels. They successfully crossed paths again as mates on the Team USA squad that brought home a World Juniors Gold Medal in 2013.
Both will wear their country’s colours again in mid-February at the NHL’s Four Nations Face-Off tournament in Montreal and Boston. They’ll be strong candidates to represent the United States again in a year at the Winter Olympics in Italy.
“I don’t think at the start of the year we were thinking about playing with each other, but when the opportunity came, obviously it’s something that, for our families that’s really special, and for us to be here together, trying to work together toward a common goal, it’s a really cool feeling and we’re both very lucky,” Miller said.
The World Junior Gold in Ufa, Russia is both Miller and Trocheck’s biggest championship accomplishment to date. Olympic Gold and/or a Stanley Cup would of course top it. They get the chance to accomplish those dreams together.
