Its easy to forget but he also started out on fire last season too.
Panarin was great in October then fell off in November, was just there in December and most of January (the Kravtsov effect) and then was pretty good to just flat out good for the rest of the regular season.
The level of his positive impact is going to completely hinge on his ability to produce on transition opportunities (until he is willing to feed into a cycle.) We saw it in the 3rd period yesterday where instead of just throwing the puck around the walls to a team mate, he tried to fire a pass that had no chance of getting through (this almost went the other way.) Then again, on that same shift, the Rangers recovered the puck, regrouped, and then he fired a f***ing seed over to Schneider for a good scoring chance (right before Dahlin's penalty on Chytil.) Did he f*** up once? Yeah but did he also immediately make up for it? Also yes.
The one thing he DID do yesterday that we didn't see a whole lot of last year (or the year before) is make plays with out a ton of space and bodies in his face. He had heavy pressure on the NYR side of the CI line at least three times that I noticed where he was able to throw the puck up ice and beat the pressure which led to either a good scoring chance or an odd man rush. Loved that he followed up his own shot to set up the first goal too, don't remember the last time I saw that from him either and his game has very much become one and done.