WASHINGTON — There has been a steady drip, drip, drip in the ice time awarded to Mika Zibanejad’s and No. 93’s line and the Swede doesn’t have to look at the final scoresheet to recognize that his shifts are somewhat farther and fewer between.
“You can feel it on the bench,” Zibanejad told The Post following the morning skate in advance of Tuesday’s match against the Capitals. “I was averaging 20-plus minutes a few years ago, and I felt really good with that because you can find a better rhythm.
“Missing those extra two or three minutes, whatever it might be, you can try and create and feel like it’s going to come. But it is what it is.”
Zibanejad’s average ice time has dropped from a career-high 21:38 in 2019-20 to his current 18:15 per following Saturday night’s match against Anaheim in which the center’s 15:07 represented his fifth-lowest allotment over the past seven seasons.
It is theoretically possible that reducing the 31-year-old’s minutes over the course of the 82-game marathon could produce residual benefits by keeping him fresher for the playoffs, where Zibanejad inevitably is matched against more physical opponents.
No. 93, however, did not necessarily embrace the theory.
“I don’t think anyone wants to play less, honestly,” Zibanejad said.
Head coach Peter Laviolette said that he is striving to fulfill a pledge he made during camp to spread ice time wealth beyond the top six so that more players are engaged.
That doesn’t completely explain why the Chris Kreider-Zibanejad-Reilly Smith unit has gotten less time at five-on-five than the Will Cuylle-Filip Chytil-Kaapo Kakko line six times over the first eight matches, but raw numbers do fill in the blanks.
For the Chytil line has combined for eight goals while allowing none, scoring at a 6.03 clip per 60:00 with an expected goal ratio of 65.99 percent. The Zibanejad unit has been on for three goals scored and three against, scoring at 2.52 goals per 60:00 with an xGF of 44.08.
“Fil’s line has been really good with regard to generating positive numbers, getting into the offensive zone, generating chances, but it’s more trying to spread the bench out a little bit,” said Laviolette, whose team brought a 6-1-1 mark into Tuesday’s match.
“I think I said at the beginning of the year that my job was to find them more minutes but the overall minutes don’t all of a sudden change to keep everybody’s minutes where they want, so some things have to come down.
“I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing,” said the coach. “Mika is on the power play, he’s on penalty-killing, he’s on five-on-five.
“Depending on how much less, that could work against you. But getting minutes throughout your bench, which is what we’re trying to do right now, I think it’s important to find a positive impact from each line.
“It’s difficult to keep somebody at 23:00 if you’re trying to bump Fil’s time a little bit because he’s playing well.”
It’s also difficult if Zibanejad and his line are not playing particularly well. Kreider scored at five-on-five in the opener. Smith has scored twice, in Game 3 against the Red Wings and in Game 6 in Montreal, once with a mixed combination. Zibanejad also scored in the game in Montreal on Oct. 22.
But the line has not yet declared an identity. They’re not yet either a puck-possession trio or a rush-oriented conglomerate. The three cerebral forwards are trying to figure it out.
“I think there’s some good things but other things we’re still working on,” Zibanejad said. “We haven’t had one of those games where everything goes in.
“The other night [against Anaheim] is a good example. We had good chances in the first but we didn’t score. You try to stay positive because that can give you energy, but at some point we need some of those pucks to go in.
“I didn’t [necessarily] warn about this, but I said we might not get results right away when we are still learning each other. There are a lot of good intentions.
“We are trying to do the right thing. We are also getting more D-zone draws and it’s a little harder to score trying to go 180 feet so there are different aspects to it. I think it’s been a decent start and it’s getting better. We all want it to work.”
Laviolette and the staff are spreading the wealth and rewarding the hot hand. That, by the way, has not belonged to Zibanejad, a tad much to the outside, a tad late.
“I think they want to find more impact offensively inside the game,” said the coach. “They often draw tougher matchups, they draw more D-zone starts, but I think they’re still working to try to become more impactful.
“I like the way we roll over the boards. The line has been good, they’re all students of the game and want to be better. They’re looking for more, they’re searching for more.”
Maybe a bit more ice time, too.
