Before Rangers fans start coming for my neck, I am not the one who is saying he shouldn’t be the next captain. Artemi Panarin in his own words said that he isn’t going to be the guy. Take a look…
Credit to the bread man here as he says he has other teammates that would be more deserving than him to be the captain of the Rangers. It’s very easy to respect a guy that is able to talk higher of his teammates than himself. As you can see from some of the quotes, Panarin believes that he is better when he is just focused on going out there and leading on the ice.
Panarin wants to be a leader on the ice and doesn’t want the pressure of having to be the guy in the locker room to motivate the guys. That is understandable but at the same time, the captain doesn’t always have to be the guy to give those motivation speeches. As a team there’s a leadership group and when you have a letter on your sweater its a group effort not just one mans job.
The Rangers search for a new captain will continue, but it looks like Panarin is perfectly okay with either just having an A or not even having a letter at all. For his sake I hope he has a career year on the ice because Rangers fans are probably going to be extra critical of him this year now that he basically is declining to be the captain. You just know there’s gonna be dumb ass Rangers fans out there that take his comments the wrong way.
-Walsh