Patrick Kane needed a reminder.
“What did Athanasiou say, again?” he asked when the subject arose in a conversation on Monday.
Here’s what Andreas Athanasiou, Kane’s Blackhawks teammate then, said about Jacob Trouba, Kane’s teammate now.
“He’s an $8-million man with zero goals, so he has to figure out how to do something when making that much,” Athanasiou said on Dec. 3, when Chicago was in town to face the Rangers. “If you can’t help the team, I guess you try to hurt guys on the other team.”
That was in response to Trouba’s open-ice takeout of Blackhawks defenseman Jujhar Khaira last season and hours ahead of Trouba’s devastating open-ice blow that night against Athanasiou himself.
Kane pursed his lips when an abbreviated version of the comments was relayed. He shook his head and spoke softly, as is his wont.
“I don’t think Troubs’ offensive numbers are what anyone pays attention to,” the wing told The Post ahead of the Rangers’ 6-2 victory over Columbus on Tuesday night at the Garden. “But when he is on the ice, you know he is on the ice.
“He puts fear into the opposition. He’s a captain. He can play both ends. He leads. He’s impressive.”
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The hit on Athanasiou that early December night set off a memorable chain of events that not only might have changed the Rangers’ season but also might have saved it.
Over the previous 10 days, the Rangers had lost to the 31st-overall Ducks; had blown 3-0 and 3-1 third-period leads at home to the Oilers and Devils, respectively, and lost both games in regulation; had lost in overtime 24 hours earlier to the 29th-overall Senators after allowing the tying goal with 49 seconds to go; and were on their way to a 5-2 loss to the then-next-to-last-place Blackhawks.
The Rangers were on their way to their 15th loss in the first 26 games (11-10-5) when Trouba blasted Athanasiou in open ice with just under three minutes remaining in the second period of a game the Rangers trailed 3-0 at the time.
That triggered a fight with Jonathan Toews, the Chicago captain, who came to his teammate’s rescue. And on his way to the room, Trouba, the Rangers’ captain, whipped off his helmet and fired it in the direction of his team’s bench while shouting, “Wake the f–k up!”
This was the 2022-23 version of, “We’ll win tonight!”
Kane kind of remembered.
“I wasn’t paying that much attention to that because we were just excited to get the win,” Kane said of the Blackhawks, who had been on an eight-game losing streak (0-7-1). “But I knew the Rangers were in a little bit of a funk.
“I was really excited to play the game the way I always was at MSG, but I also knew New York was a possible destination that I could be interested in [at the deadline]. I wanted to play well.”
Kane did play well, recording a power-play goal and a pair of assists. The Rangers, meanwhile, were in a state of crisis that elevated to a DEFCON 1 level two nights later, when they trailed the Blues, then 25th overall, 3-2 after the second period. Nothing was safe. Nothing was secure.
Until, that is, the Rangers struck for three goals in the third period for a 6-4 victory that December night. That win sent them on their way to, nearly four months later, clinching a playoff spot Monday. There have been some missteps along the way, but the Blueshirts never looked back.
Indeed, clinching seems like an afterthought. A birthright, even. But it was neither in December.
“We talked in training camp how it wasn’t a given, but we have all set our sights higher than this,” Trouba told The Post. “It’s an achievement that we should be proud of, but there is a lot more left to do.”
Blue lines, red lines, checkered lines … and the Dec. 3 line of demarcation for this team that has gone 33-10-5 since the captain tossed his hat and used a four-letter exclamation to emphasize the point.
“I don’t know what happened at the start, but I do know that when your expectations are so high, it’s a different kind of a challenge,” said Kane, who scored a nifty first-period goal Tuesday against Columbus. “You come into camp with the mentality of getting back to the conference finals, in their case, and then you realize that you have to go through the whole regular season just to get that chance.
“That can be tough to deal with. I remember coming back after winning it for the first time in 2010, and how hard it was. We didn’t clinch a playoff spot until the last game.”
The Rangers punched their ticket to the dance with nine games remaining on the schedule, just as they did as last season. But 2021-22 represented a smooth ride. This season, the captain needed to remind the team to, “Wake the f–k up!”
So I asked Trouba, who has pretty consistently swatted away references to the incident, whether he could trace the turnaround to that. Or whether that simply represented a coincidence of the highest order.
“That’s not something I think about,” he said.
Yes, but …
“I’ll tell you in three months.”