Sammy Blais is looking forward to it.
The ACL tear that ended his first season with the Rangers after just 14 games is over. He even politely declined to participate in former Devils defender PK Subban’s bright, dirty swivel that prevented him from playing a part in the Rangers’ best season in seven years, which included a close battle for the conference final. For Blais, it’s all about picking up where he left off and taking advantage of another chance to take his game to an NHL team with Stanley Cup ambitions.
“I’m ready to go,” Blais told The Post in a recent telephone interview. “So when I start training camp, I have to be myself and be the same player as before.”
Rangers president and general manager Chris Drury has re-signed Blais — who came to New York when the position returned to the trade in July 2021 that sent Pavel Buchnevich to St. Louis — to a $1.525 million one-year deal at the United States. beginning of this low season . It was a $25,000 bump for a player who only had a sample of games in the red, white and blue jersey – but that shows how strongly Drury and head coach Gerard Gallant think of the 26-year-old winger.
“He’s been in the league for a while,” Gallant said of Blais, who was the Blues’ 176th overall pick in the 2014 draft. But he’s one of those guys who has really good hands, as we see, and he’s a great force forward.”
Blais admitted it was nerve-wracking to suffer the first knee injury of his career at the start of what was a contract year, but the hardest part of the rehab was not being with the team as much as he would have liked. He made a conscious effort to be a part of the season as much as possible.
Once he was able to walk well, Blais attended most of the home games. When the team was practicing at the training center in Tarrytown, Blais always trained at the same time. Although he missed some road trips during the regular season, the Rangers brought Blais to St. Louis in mid-March so that he could see his former teammates and visit the organization with which he spent the first four seasons of his NHL career.
Blais then traveled with the Rangers in playoffs, starting with the Carolina series, when he began skating morning skates with the team.
“I wanted to prove to everyone that they made a good choice to trade for me, and it was really hard to be away from the team,” said Blais. “I didn’t get as close to the guys as I wanted so it was a little hard for that and being away from the game. But I’m fine now. I’m just looking forward to being back on the ice with the guys at training camp.”
Asked if he felt pressure to prove he was a good replacement in a trade for Buchnevich, who was a Ranger for five seasons and a fixture in the line-up, Blais said he didn’t look at it that way.
“When I was traded, they told me that they really liked the way I played and that they needed it at the Rangers,” he said. “For me, I just came here to do my job and play like I was playing in St. Louis. That’s what they wanted me to do, and I will continue to do the same.”
Blais, who went home to Quebec for a few weeks before returning to spend most of his summer in New York, had been skating on the right wing of the top line alongside Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider when he was injured. Although brought in primarily to serve in a bottom six role, Blais proved to have a soft set of hands to match his blue-collar style of play.
In addition to 17 penalty minutes, Blais handed out four assists and scored 17 shots in 14 games as he strengthened the Rangers lead and played around the walls.
“His physicality [and] his level of competition is the way we all want to play,” team-mate Barclay Goodrow said of Blais earlier this season. “I think that’s what our group has been aiming for. He’s one of the hardest hitters I’ve ever seen, to be honest. He’s a guy that D-men don’t want to play against, and that’s kind of infectious for the whole group.”
Blais should once again be an option in the bottom six for the 2022-23 season, which kicks off with the start of training camp at the end of September. Gallant, however, likes to add tougher players to the top two units, which he did with both Blais and Goodrow last season.
Part of the reason Blais landed on the top line was Alexis Lafreniere’s inability to secure the spot. That’s not to say Lafreniere won’t be able to earn the job this season, but the Rangers certainly hope the former first-overall pick will be able to keep Blais in the bottom six and in turn balance the lineup .
“To be honest, I think we have everything here,” Blais said when asked about his evaluation of the Rangers. “I don’t think I played last year, of course, but I looked at all the games. They played really well and when I saw them play I thought, ‘We have a really good team here and I want to be part of it.’ But I think we’ll just keep working hard and I think if we do that, we can beat any team in this league.”
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