Larry Brooks of the NY Post hit on several Rangers’ points in his column this past Sunday. I will cover most of those in various columns during the week. Today’s topic is one that hit me on Friday was looking at the preliminary World Junior rosters. The number of New York Rangers prospects among the four top teams is lacking.
By my count, Drury has traded a net of one first-round draft pick, three second-rounders, four third-rounders, and three fourth-rounders over his four-year tenure. That probably explains why the organization had just two players — 2024 first-rounder E.J. Emery and 2025 second-rounder Malcolm Spence — represented at the World Junior Summer Showcase featuring teams from the USA, Canada, Sweden, and Finland.
Recent World Junior Participation
If you go back into the history – even just the recent past – of the World Juniors tournament, several New York players were key members of various squads. Granted, that was more for the US than any other country, but the current lack of players from the Blueshirts somewhat ties into the picks traded. As noted by Brooks, part of that is also due to players aging out, which always is the case. But the goal then is to have the pipeline to hopefully replace those members.
The fall off in membership on those teams is also attributed to picks traded but also so-so drafting for a while, though that has been somewhat remediated. Despite moving the aforementioned picks, New York was fairly well represented in the recent past. Gabe Perreault, Drew Fortescue, Dylan Garand, Brennan Othmann, Will Cuylle, Brett Berard and Kalle Vaisanen all have suited up for their respective countries in recent years. Go back a bit further, and New York had double digits in terms of possible players for the overall tournament.
That prior sentence is the key. This is not a referendum on Spence and Emery, who should play for Canada and the US. But what’s beyond them, even with players aging out? The depth and breadth of the pipeline is missing, impacted by picks traded but also so-so drafting at best. Sooner or later, that poor drafting will catch up to you. Using the argument that the team was a Cup contender and picked late doesn’t hold much water when you look at Carolina and Dallas, who have found gems later in the first and second rounds.
Unless and until Drury and the scouting department do so, what we see as possible WJC team possibilities will help define and evidence the system as a whole.
Couple of younger players/prospects picked up along the way, too. Juuso, Brisson, Terrance, Morrow. Seems like a swap of drafting raw players vs trading for known projects/talent.
In some cases, term “prospects” might be a bit of a stretch. But agree in case of Morrow with others up for debate.
Morrow and Terrance for sure.
The point is that they’re bolstering the prospect pool in other ways. It doesn’t really bother me that they only have two WJC players, especially because the two that they do have there are there are really good prospects.
I just want to see a solid pipeline again. The pool seems slightly better that in past year
Even though we didnt have a 1st round pick this year, we got a guy who for pretty much the entire year was ranked as a top 20 prospect. So we might have got 1st round value with the 2nd round pick. Plus what we currently have with Perreault, Fortescue, Emery, Roobroeck, Morrow. Its definitely getting better. Plus looking forward, having two 1st round picks (although late) in what many people believe one of the strongest drafts in years. Its gonna take a couple years, assuming they dont trade some of this.
Honestly, no matter who the GM is, we’ve never drafted nor developed talent well. What is it about this franchise that this has been a constant issue for decades
The age old question. Not like we haven’t had prospects but view have taken that next step at the top level.
Then the problem isnt the GM, the is the developmental staff. Follow the crumbs. Jed Ortmeyer has been the director of player development since 2017. We complain about this non-stop and yet the one position that hasnt changed in all this time is this one.
I am more concerned about the fact that none of the prospects mentioned from recent years have really stepped up and shown that they deserved their draft spot. I wouldn’t care at all about a bare cupboard, if our youngsters were forcing their way into the top lines/pairings and showing dramatic improvement as they acclimate to the NHL. Instead we are still hoping the way we did with Kakko, Kravtsov, Miller and Laffy.
If veterans are locked into top-six roles, it’s hard for rookies to break through. Will Cuylle did last season. Will see if Othmann or Perreault do.
Good point Tony. Is ortmeyer really the right fit for Director of Player Development? History suggests otherwise…
Talent development really needs to get better.
Jan – completely unrelated to hockey talk and idk if you’re the right person to run up the flagpole: it would be an upgrade to the comments section if we could get edits/delete options. Since this is our new home, we might as well make it comfy 🙂
The forums have edit mechanism but blog comments do not. Admin is seeing if that would be feasible. Will keep you informed.
Found some of you…;)
Not enough of us yet though!
Please spread the word! Our site users are our best recruiters for people to join the community.
If you guys could somehow link the blog post with the forum, how HB kind of used to have it, it would be almost perfect.
There’s a way to do it. I don’t recall how it it’s done. It would be good for the readers and a time saver from posting each blog to the forum manually so I’m all for it. I will address it this coming week.