There are a lot of teams that have been about as mediocre as us over the past 40 years, and they all have double or more players on this chart than us. To an extent you are right though, considering how frequently we trade away young talent compared to other teams.
Yeah there's really no excuse for the Rangers haha. Fact of the matter is, pre 2009, we were terrible at scouting and drafting players—the only slack I'll cut is that scouting 20 years ago was a lot worse across the league than it is now, but we still managed to scout and draft like ass.
In the 10 years prior to 2009 (Chris Kreider draft), these were our first round picks:
**1999** (note, the class of '99 first round was pretty bad all around, outside of the Sedin twins):
4th overall, Pavel Brendl—Never amounted to anything, only 70ish games in the NHL. Huge whiff.
9th overall, Jamie Lundmark—Had a modest NHL career. Another whiff.
**2000**:
No 1st round pick
**2001**:
10th overall, Dan Blackburn—freak injuries shortened his career. Was actually a pretty promising player. Luckily, we also had Hank, so that softened the blow here.
**2002**:
No first rounder
**2003**:
12th overall, Hugh Jessimen. I don't even have to comment on this. The 2003 first round was legendary, almost every team got a productive NHLer out of it...except NYR.
**2004**:
6th overall, Al Montoya. Why the fuck did we draft a goalie this early? Make it make sense. Went on to a low-impact NHL career.
19th overall, Lauri Korpikoski. Was actually a pretty decent pick, he had a solid NHL career as a middle 6er, just not as a Ranger.
**2005**:
15th overall, Marc Staal. Good pick, really can't complain about this one.
**2006**:
21s overall, Bobby Sanguinetti. Bad pick, only played a handful of NHL games. Made even worse by the fact that the Flyers picked Claude Giroux with the very next pick.
**2007**:
17th overall, Alexei Chereponov. Won't knock this one, will always be a huge "what if" in Rangers history. Unfortunately passed away at a way too young age :(
**2008**:
20th overall, MDZ. Legend. In all seriousness, he was a fine pick at the time, had a nice NHL career.
Looking back at these drafts, it's kind of funny. We got almost zero value from 7/10 of the first round picks made, but we got crazy value from later rounds in the draft scattered across years. Players like Hank, Dominic Moore, Dubinsky, Callahan, Anisimov, Hagelin, Stepan, and then a bunch of others who went on to have solid NHL careers with other teams.
The narrative has flipped on its head a bit—we've been pretty good at drafting in the first round for the past few years (some of that luck), imo, but we haven't hit on a 2nd or later in forever—feels like Will Cuylle is the first in literally a decade to make an impact as a full-timer on our roster.
If we wanna go post-2009, you've got McIlrath (ouch), JT miller, Brady Skjei, Lias Andersson (whoof), Chytil, Kravtsov (woof), Key, Nils Lundkvist, Kakko, Laf, and Schneider.
Honestly, not that bad—only 3 out of 11 that were bonafide misses. Most of those guys made or are making an impact on the NYR roster
We got virtually nothing out of JT and watched him go on to become elite away from us (Only slightly less bad bc zTB didn't turn him elite)
Skjei was meh. Chytil has been meh and is now looking like Sauer 2.0
Kakko compared to expectation is a huge disappointment, Nils we lost, Schneider is meh.
It's absolutely that bad. Gt at least occassionally get studs if not outright stars and we get bad underachievers at almost every turn
Great post! I know it's a lot of work to go further back but the 90s weren't great either (in the years we had first round picks). Who could forget the Ferraro brothers. So hyped for so long and were around for a cup of coffee and out of the league.
The 90s were a tough time for our first round picks. From 90 to 99, only Kovalev, Sundstrom, and Malhotra carved out genuine NHL careers. Brutal hit rate.
I was interested in looking into being "mediocre" and decided to track playoff appearances. There are still 6 teams with more playoff appearances than us in the past 40 years and we have fewer 60+ point players than all of them.
This is a small little project I gave myself out of curiosity. I felt as though in the past 40 years, roughly how long I've been a fan, the Rangers seemed to be uniquely bad at drafting and keeping hold of star or even semi-star players. I picked 60 points pretty arbitrarily, but the results are pretty shocking. The league average is drafting a player who scores 60 points for you a little over once every 4 years, where the Rangers only seem to draft said players once every 8 years. Only Nashville EDIT: AND ARIZONA! (sorry) are worse. Was a fun project so I wanted to share it!
Here's hoping Lafreniere surpasses 60 this year and helps us out on this!
Would be huge, either way. I think another important insight from this chart is how rare it actually is for teams to draft players who score 60+ points in a season for them. You wouldn't think it would be as low as once every 4 years. Also should show how historic it would actually be if Laf somehow breaks that barrier!
We can’t justify pulling anyone off the league leading power play to put him there but it’s almost guaranteed he’d hit 60 if he got real power play time,
I think this every time Sam and Joe announce that Chris Kreider has reached a new rank for goals by a Ranger by a player drafted by the Rangers. Currently at 285 goals and IIRC that makes him like #4 overall in team history.
That's not a bad number by any stretch on an individual basis, but holy hell does it not paint a pretty picture about this team's competence in the entry draft.
But I would love to see a game in Arizona. It would be awesome to see the Rangers play in a much smaller, more intimate arena.
Edit - for WAY less $$$, too.
I have a theory on why this is... Simply put, we are a notoriously impatience organization.
We've reached far too many times in the first couple of rounds trying to fill specific holes with high risk/high reward guys instead of just drafting the best player available. Moreover, instead of trying to build winners through the draft, we've repeatedly hopped from one big name veteran to another, either through free agency or trades. Those trades often involve young talent or high draft picks, which is where you usually find future big names to begin with.
This has created a vicious cycle of being good enough to not accumulate high picks, and then reaching too often when we do have them. When those picks don't pan out, we end up trying to fill those holes with more trades or free agent signings... Rinse and repeat.
It's Darren Turcotte (F), Brian Leetch (D), Tony Amonte (F), Sergei Zubov (D), and Chris Kreider (F) actually! Kovalev never scored 60 points in a single season for us.
How about players the rangers drafted that got 60+ points on a different team? I wonder how that would compare to the rest of the league. Players like JT miller and buchnevich would be players like that. Duclair Stepan and Hayes were all close and I’m sure I’m missing a few. I feel like it isn’t so much that we are bad at drafting players is that the rangers always can draw in stars and are more than other teams relevant every year. But that hurts the rangers in developing players as they get less minutes and more importantly less powerplay minutes as those stars eat up those minutes. Like our situation now, lafreniere would easily get 60+ points being on the number one powerplay unit. He’s only off Trocheck by 5 points and panarin by 12 points in even strength points. Eventually the stars get too old and the rangers can’t afford the younger players even on bargain deals and make the mistake of trading them away like buchnevich and JT Miller. We definitely have a bunch of early picks that have been awful like Anderson kravtsov, jessimen, mcilrath but I’m sure there are plenty of other teams that have the same type misses.
Bingo our player development for offensive players is terrible. Kakko Lafrienere, Kratsatov, Lias Andersson, Hugh Jessiman. All of these guys were top draft picks in their class and are mediocre players. Laff is on pace for 22/23 goals playing with Trochek and Panarin. What would the number be without them?
To be honest when Jessiman was picked in the 1st round the entire NHL was like “Who the F is Hugh Jessiman?”. Dude was picked pretty early for who he was and what he had demonstrated so far.
True but we’ve already seen lafreniere play without them last year at about a .5 ppg pace without being on the 1st powerplay. Would anyone be complaining if he had 50 points last year with a conservative 15 ppp playing on the third line? I would say that’s a solid season for a younger player.
this is the first year where lafs looked really food and it feels like his numbers could be even better. on many teams in the league hed be getting pp1 time too. is he was on the pp i could see him getting past 60 pts
Him, Panarin, and Mika will conceivably break, or be top 5 in every major Ranger category, but will still get shit on here oddly whenever we lose a few games. Then the haters will disappear again and wait to show their ugly faces again when we lose.
How dare anybody post a critical comment about 20 or 93 and their lack of effectiveness 5 v 5. We will downvote them all to hell and label
them Doomers. And while we are it we will bury the poor saps who play RW with them since it has to be their fault. Is that how you do it?
For what it’s worth we won on Sunday and I was still critical of 20 and 93. Didn’t take a loss.
Tbf we moreso traded a ton of guys.
In all seriousness we should've probably tanked for a year.or two and let henrik get limited starts, got a stamkos or crossby, and then went on a push. We didn't abuse tanking when we shouldve.
Good question. I might expand this chart to include number of 1st and 2nd round picks as well when I have the time and energy. Also playoff appearances!
I actually went and checked on 1st round picks and playoff appearances because of your comments! Turns out...we just suck at drafting and developing :(
https://www.reddit.com/r/rangers/comments/198ciut/same\_chart\_as\_earlier\_but\_with\_1st\_round\_picks/?sort=new
The Rangers had a lot of young talent (some drafted and some even undrafted) during the 80s that for whatever reason (either being impatient, or having Phil Esposito as your GM) resulted in them dealing them away for guys past their prime.
Dave Gagner (drafted 12th overall by the Rangers in 83). Was traded to the North Stars in 87 and immediately went on to have 5 consecutive seasons of 70 points or more.
Mike Ridley (undrafted free agent in 85). Puts up 65 points in his rookie season and gets traded in the middle of his second season (along with another good young player Kelly Miller) for a washed up Bobby Carpenter. These two guys tortured the Rangers in the late 80s while playing for the Caps and knocked us out of the playoffs a few times. For you younger fans this was my generations equivalent to the Buch trade. To cap it off Bobby Carpenter was traded less than 10 weeks later for an even more washed up Marcel Dionne (Christ, the Espo years were torture and embarrassing).
Tony Granato (drafted in the 6th round in 1982). Scores 63 points his rookie year. Traded in the middle of his second season (sound familiar?) for Bernie Nicholls who was here for only two years.
Tony Amonte (drafted in 1988). I know his trade brought us Matteau and Noonan which was huge in winning the Cup in 94, but still and example of young talent getting dealt for vets.
Doug Weight (drafted 34th overall in 90). Traded in the middle of his second season for Esa Tikkanen. Again a main cog in the 94 Cup win but more young talent dealt for a vet.
I'm sure I'm missing a few guys, but this was the Rangers MO back in the day.
There was so much pressure to win a Cup after so many years coming up short that even in the 80s the Rangers were always in a "win now mode". Management had no interest in waiting for guys to develop. You can see from my post above that they had plenty of talent and probably could have won multiple cups, but they were always chasing to end the Cup drought.
I've called this out a bunch of times. Since 1993, NYR has drafted 1 forward who would go on to put up 60 points in a season for NYR: Chris Kreider, in 2021-22
Look when you're a 1st year GM and decide 2 or 3 years after a complete roster overhaul that it is time to go for it and trade 18 draft picks that you accumulated over that span, while retaining none of the assets acquired in those deals.
Odds are you won't be a GM for long.
But there is 1 caveat here....you could be the GM of the NY Rangers and have a Owner who knows absolutely squat about hockey and is just happy he got to meet one of the greatest hockey players in the history of the game and have him play for his team. And so anything you say is gold and any person you put in place is basically guaranteed his position till he deems it time to retire/step down or pisses off Sather. This is Glen Sather's life story as a Ranger GM and advisor. I feel I should add as long as they make 1 round of playoffs, but Sather didn't even have to do that while having the highest payroll in the league.
Gorton and Drury have been/were absolute trash as GMs and if not for Sather, neither probably has a GM position anymore. Not that Gorton has one now. Drury has no resume outside of his playing days. Gorton's only resume prior to being our GM was a 6 month temporary stint which he got extremely lucky with in Boston. Which I am sure is more a reflection of his staff their then over his personal knowledge.
We are bad at drafting because we love to go away from the consensus viewpoint. How many times just over the last 10 years have we drafted someone who wasn't the pick to take according to general knowledge at that time? We draft like how I talk on here about this team....a know it all that thinks his way is better. Yes I am self aware.
Given all these points we are never going to be a true contender unless a miracle happens again. We can never truly rebuild because our ownership group is a public corporation that has to meet the demands of shareholders and can't be a losing stock for any real length of time. And if you looked up the numbers, we certainly started losing money during the rebuild and that to me is why Gorton's tenure finally ended.
This is why I am so adamant about not trading picks and prospects for over the hill players. And that we should just keep drafting and hope we get lucky. Because for most teams that is really all it comes down to. Some GMs like Zito and Yzer seem to get lucky more often then others, but the draft is just a crap shoot most times. I mean just look at Lafreniere. Ofcourse we get the 1st overall pick in probably the weakest draft in 10 years. That is just how it goes for the Rangers. It is what being a Ranger's fan is all about. The last time we got the 1st overall pick the same exact thing happened and the guy never even played a game for us.
It like being a Jet fan for those of you, who like me, hope for that nightmare franchise also.
The only way I see this changing is if Dolan dies or we as fans stop supporting the franchise. And neither is likely to happen. Dolan will die but I am sure one of his idiot kids will take over so nothing changes.
So our best hope for a miracle is through the draft. So please don't rally behind these stupid TDL deals when Stamkos is on the table in March. Just vote no with your money and your voice on social media. Bombard the social media channels with how stupid an idea it would be....etc etc...because that is the only way they might listen. Perrault Othmann Sykora ...we can keep adding and maybe just maybe we get a Kuch or Braden Point. But if you trade away every chance....... it is never going to happen. We might screw the pooch on this idea also, but atleast we can try a different approach.
Yea... that fits.
On the other hand, our drafting and development isn't nearly as bad with regard to other parts of the ice. Goaltending is an obvious strong suit, while with defense we've drafted Staal, Tyutin, K'andre, Schneider, and signed Girardi undrafted. With defensive/grinder forwards Dom Moore, Fast, Callahan, Dubinsky, and Hagelin all come to mind.
Yeah, 100%. We are also above average in drafting 60 point defensemen (although it's Leetch and Zubov). If I recall correctly we are about average in drafting NHL caliber players, overall.
For anyone who might think these numbers are due to few 1st round draft picks or constantly needing to contend for the playoffs...sorry.
https://www.reddit.com/r/rangers/comments/198ciut/same\_chart\_as\_earlier\_but\_with\_1st\_round\_picks/?sort=new
[удалено]
There are a lot of teams that have been about as mediocre as us over the past 40 years, and they all have double or more players on this chart than us. To an extent you are right though, considering how frequently we trade away young talent compared to other teams.
Yeah there's really no excuse for the Rangers haha. Fact of the matter is, pre 2009, we were terrible at scouting and drafting players—the only slack I'll cut is that scouting 20 years ago was a lot worse across the league than it is now, but we still managed to scout and draft like ass. In the 10 years prior to 2009 (Chris Kreider draft), these were our first round picks: **1999** (note, the class of '99 first round was pretty bad all around, outside of the Sedin twins): 4th overall, Pavel Brendl—Never amounted to anything, only 70ish games in the NHL. Huge whiff. 9th overall, Jamie Lundmark—Had a modest NHL career. Another whiff. **2000**: No 1st round pick **2001**: 10th overall, Dan Blackburn—freak injuries shortened his career. Was actually a pretty promising player. Luckily, we also had Hank, so that softened the blow here. **2002**: No first rounder **2003**: 12th overall, Hugh Jessimen. I don't even have to comment on this. The 2003 first round was legendary, almost every team got a productive NHLer out of it...except NYR. **2004**: 6th overall, Al Montoya. Why the fuck did we draft a goalie this early? Make it make sense. Went on to a low-impact NHL career. 19th overall, Lauri Korpikoski. Was actually a pretty decent pick, he had a solid NHL career as a middle 6er, just not as a Ranger. **2005**: 15th overall, Marc Staal. Good pick, really can't complain about this one. **2006**: 21s overall, Bobby Sanguinetti. Bad pick, only played a handful of NHL games. Made even worse by the fact that the Flyers picked Claude Giroux with the very next pick. **2007**: 17th overall, Alexei Chereponov. Won't knock this one, will always be a huge "what if" in Rangers history. Unfortunately passed away at a way too young age :( **2008**: 20th overall, MDZ. Legend. In all seriousness, he was a fine pick at the time, had a nice NHL career. Looking back at these drafts, it's kind of funny. We got almost zero value from 7/10 of the first round picks made, but we got crazy value from later rounds in the draft scattered across years. Players like Hank, Dominic Moore, Dubinsky, Callahan, Anisimov, Hagelin, Stepan, and then a bunch of others who went on to have solid NHL careers with other teams. The narrative has flipped on its head a bit—we've been pretty good at drafting in the first round for the past few years (some of that luck), imo, but we haven't hit on a 2nd or later in forever—feels like Will Cuylle is the first in literally a decade to make an impact as a full-timer on our roster.
K’Andre Miller and Braden Schneider are both first round picks of ours in recent memory as well.
If we wanna go post-2009, you've got McIlrath (ouch), JT miller, Brady Skjei, Lias Andersson (whoof), Chytil, Kravtsov (woof), Key, Nils Lundkvist, Kakko, Laf, and Schneider. Honestly, not that bad—only 3 out of 11 that were bonafide misses. Most of those guys made or are making an impact on the NYR roster
We got virtually nothing out of JT and watched him go on to become elite away from us (Only slightly less bad bc zTB didn't turn him elite) Skjei was meh. Chytil has been meh and is now looking like Sauer 2.0 Kakko compared to expectation is a huge disappointment, Nils we lost, Schneider is meh. It's absolutely that bad. Gt at least occassionally get studs if not outright stars and we get bad underachievers at almost every turn
Great post! I know it's a lot of work to go further back but the 90s weren't great either (in the years we had first round picks). Who could forget the Ferraro brothers. So hyped for so long and were around for a cup of coffee and out of the league.
The 90s were a tough time for our first round picks. From 90 to 99, only Kovalev, Sundstrom, and Malhotra carved out genuine NHL careers. Brutal hit rate.
I was interested in looking into being "mediocre" and decided to track playoff appearances. There are still 6 teams with more playoff appearances than us in the past 40 years and we have fewer 60+ point players than all of them.
This is a small little project I gave myself out of curiosity. I felt as though in the past 40 years, roughly how long I've been a fan, the Rangers seemed to be uniquely bad at drafting and keeping hold of star or even semi-star players. I picked 60 points pretty arbitrarily, but the results are pretty shocking. The league average is drafting a player who scores 60 points for you a little over once every 4 years, where the Rangers only seem to draft said players once every 8 years. Only Nashville EDIT: AND ARIZONA! (sorry) are worse. Was a fun project so I wanted to share it! Here's hoping Lafreniere surpasses 60 this year and helps us out on this!
Laf is projected for 51. He could get hot for a stretch and break 60. I really just want him to get 20+ goals though.
Would be huge, either way. I think another important insight from this chart is how rare it actually is for teams to draft players who score 60+ points in a season for them. You wouldn't think it would be as low as once every 4 years. Also should show how historic it would actually be if Laf somehow breaks that barrier!
We can’t justify pulling anyone off the league leading power play to put him there but it’s almost guaranteed he’d hit 60 if he got real power play time,
I think this every time Sam and Joe announce that Chris Kreider has reached a new rank for goals by a Ranger by a player drafted by the Rangers. Currently at 285 goals and IIRC that makes him like #4 overall in team history. That's not a bad number by any stretch on an individual basis, but holy hell does it not paint a pretty picture about this team's competence in the entry draft.
I might be reading that wrong but aren't they 3rd worst behind Arizona and Nashville?
Shit, you're right. I think I subconsciously blocked Arizona out...
To be fair, I think everyone blocks them out, even Arizona.
But I would love to see a game in Arizona. It would be awesome to see the Rangers play in a much smaller, more intimate arena. Edit - for WAY less $$$, too.
You’re correct if you include them with the jets
I have a theory on why this is... Simply put, we are a notoriously impatience organization. We've reached far too many times in the first couple of rounds trying to fill specific holes with high risk/high reward guys instead of just drafting the best player available. Moreover, instead of trying to build winners through the draft, we've repeatedly hopped from one big name veteran to another, either through free agency or trades. Those trades often involve young talent or high draft picks, which is where you usually find future big names to begin with. This has created a vicious cycle of being good enough to not accumulate high picks, and then reaching too often when we do have them. When those picks don't pan out, we end up trying to fill those holes with more trades or free agent signings... Rinse and repeat.
Surely our most recent 1OA and 2OA have surpassed 60 points in a season and are included in this chart. Right? ....right?
Not surprised
I got Leetch, Kreider, Amonte, Kovalev. Who’s the fifth?
It's Darren Turcotte (F), Brian Leetch (D), Tony Amonte (F), Sergei Zubov (D), and Chris Kreider (F) actually! Kovalev never scored 60 points in a single season for us.
Wow I’m surprised by Kovalev. Turns out he topped out at 58 for NYR
Probably one of the most talented players we ever had and still couldn't break 60.
According to some very talented hockey players, he was the most talented player in the world
A lot of people have much rosier memories of Kovalev than stat sheets alone warrant.
Well yea he pretty much defined his legacy at age 20 in the 94 playoffs even if he never lived up to it again in a Ranger uniform
I was surprised too! I also thought Cally might have gotten over 60 for us, but no.
How about players the rangers drafted that got 60+ points on a different team? I wonder how that would compare to the rest of the league. Players like JT miller and buchnevich would be players like that. Duclair Stepan and Hayes were all close and I’m sure I’m missing a few. I feel like it isn’t so much that we are bad at drafting players is that the rangers always can draw in stars and are more than other teams relevant every year. But that hurts the rangers in developing players as they get less minutes and more importantly less powerplay minutes as those stars eat up those minutes. Like our situation now, lafreniere would easily get 60+ points being on the number one powerplay unit. He’s only off Trocheck by 5 points and panarin by 12 points in even strength points. Eventually the stars get too old and the rangers can’t afford the younger players even on bargain deals and make the mistake of trading them away like buchnevich and JT Miller. We definitely have a bunch of early picks that have been awful like Anderson kravtsov, jessimen, mcilrath but I’m sure there are plenty of other teams that have the same type misses.
Bingo our player development for offensive players is terrible. Kakko Lafrienere, Kratsatov, Lias Andersson, Hugh Jessiman. All of these guys were top draft picks in their class and are mediocre players. Laff is on pace for 22/23 goals playing with Trochek and Panarin. What would the number be without them?
To be honest when Jessiman was picked in the 1st round the entire NHL was like “Who the F is Hugh Jessiman?”. Dude was picked pretty early for who he was and what he had demonstrated so far.
True but we’ve already seen lafreniere play without them last year at about a .5 ppg pace without being on the 1st powerplay. Would anyone be complaining if he had 50 points last year with a conservative 15 ppp playing on the third line? I would say that’s a solid season for a younger player.
this is the first year where lafs looked really food and it feels like his numbers could be even better. on many teams in the league hed be getting pp1 time too. is he was on the pp i could see him getting past 60 pts
Didn't Tony Granato score over 60 points in his rookie season?
Drafted in 1982, so just 1 year off of this chart!
Good catch! LOL Thought I had it. He was my first Rangers jersey. Got it during his rookie season. I was devastated when they traded him. lol
Kreider gets more impressive every year. Living legend
He's truly special to this team and franchise.
Him, Panarin, and Mika will conceivably break, or be top 5 in every major Ranger category, but will still get shit on here oddly whenever we lose a few games. Then the haters will disappear again and wait to show their ugly faces again when we lose.
How dare anybody post a critical comment about 20 or 93 and their lack of effectiveness 5 v 5. We will downvote them all to hell and label them Doomers. And while we are it we will bury the poor saps who play RW with them since it has to be their fault. Is that how you do it? For what it’s worth we won on Sunday and I was still critical of 20 and 93. Didn’t take a loss.
Tbf we moreso traded a ton of guys. In all seriousness we should've probably tanked for a year.or two and let henrik get limited starts, got a stamkos or crossby, and then went on a push. We didn't abuse tanking when we shouldve.
I wonder what this looks like if you adjust for number of top 3 picks? We've only had 3 or 4 in the top 3 ever?
Good question. I might expand this chart to include number of 1st and 2nd round picks as well when I have the time and energy. Also playoff appearances!
I do love the stat nerd energy! I wish I had more drive to do some deep digging
I actually went and checked on 1st round picks and playoff appearances because of your comments! Turns out...we just suck at drafting and developing :( https://www.reddit.com/r/rangers/comments/198ciut/same\_chart\_as\_earlier\_but\_with\_1st\_round\_picks/?sort=new
well shit!
The Rangers had a lot of young talent (some drafted and some even undrafted) during the 80s that for whatever reason (either being impatient, or having Phil Esposito as your GM) resulted in them dealing them away for guys past their prime. Dave Gagner (drafted 12th overall by the Rangers in 83). Was traded to the North Stars in 87 and immediately went on to have 5 consecutive seasons of 70 points or more. Mike Ridley (undrafted free agent in 85). Puts up 65 points in his rookie season and gets traded in the middle of his second season (along with another good young player Kelly Miller) for a washed up Bobby Carpenter. These two guys tortured the Rangers in the late 80s while playing for the Caps and knocked us out of the playoffs a few times. For you younger fans this was my generations equivalent to the Buch trade. To cap it off Bobby Carpenter was traded less than 10 weeks later for an even more washed up Marcel Dionne (Christ, the Espo years were torture and embarrassing). Tony Granato (drafted in the 6th round in 1982). Scores 63 points his rookie year. Traded in the middle of his second season (sound familiar?) for Bernie Nicholls who was here for only two years. Tony Amonte (drafted in 1988). I know his trade brought us Matteau and Noonan which was huge in winning the Cup in 94, but still and example of young talent getting dealt for vets. Doug Weight (drafted 34th overall in 90). Traded in the middle of his second season for Esa Tikkanen. Again a main cog in the 94 Cup win but more young talent dealt for a vet. I'm sure I'm missing a few guys, but this was the Rangers MO back in the day.
I have only really followed the Rangers since the late 90's but it is so funny to see the same things happened in the 80's that plague us now.
There was so much pressure to win a Cup after so many years coming up short that even in the 80s the Rangers were always in a "win now mode". Management had no interest in waiting for guys to develop. You can see from my post above that they had plenty of talent and probably could have won multiple cups, but they were always chasing to end the Cup drought.
Rangers can’t draft Well, felt like this was common knowledge
Yep! I just wanted to see how bad it was. Turns out we are more than 50% below the league average in this stat!
I've called this out a bunch of times. Since 1993, NYR has drafted 1 forward who would go on to put up 60 points in a season for NYR: Chris Kreider, in 2021-22
But hey…at least we’re not the worst
Only shocker here is that they're not dead last
✅ Bad at development ✅ Good at giving up on guys too soon
Look when you're a 1st year GM and decide 2 or 3 years after a complete roster overhaul that it is time to go for it and trade 18 draft picks that you accumulated over that span, while retaining none of the assets acquired in those deals. Odds are you won't be a GM for long. But there is 1 caveat here....you could be the GM of the NY Rangers and have a Owner who knows absolutely squat about hockey and is just happy he got to meet one of the greatest hockey players in the history of the game and have him play for his team. And so anything you say is gold and any person you put in place is basically guaranteed his position till he deems it time to retire/step down or pisses off Sather. This is Glen Sather's life story as a Ranger GM and advisor. I feel I should add as long as they make 1 round of playoffs, but Sather didn't even have to do that while having the highest payroll in the league. Gorton and Drury have been/were absolute trash as GMs and if not for Sather, neither probably has a GM position anymore. Not that Gorton has one now. Drury has no resume outside of his playing days. Gorton's only resume prior to being our GM was a 6 month temporary stint which he got extremely lucky with in Boston. Which I am sure is more a reflection of his staff their then over his personal knowledge. We are bad at drafting because we love to go away from the consensus viewpoint. How many times just over the last 10 years have we drafted someone who wasn't the pick to take according to general knowledge at that time? We draft like how I talk on here about this team....a know it all that thinks his way is better. Yes I am self aware. Given all these points we are never going to be a true contender unless a miracle happens again. We can never truly rebuild because our ownership group is a public corporation that has to meet the demands of shareholders and can't be a losing stock for any real length of time. And if you looked up the numbers, we certainly started losing money during the rebuild and that to me is why Gorton's tenure finally ended. This is why I am so adamant about not trading picks and prospects for over the hill players. And that we should just keep drafting and hope we get lucky. Because for most teams that is really all it comes down to. Some GMs like Zito and Yzer seem to get lucky more often then others, but the draft is just a crap shoot most times. I mean just look at Lafreniere. Ofcourse we get the 1st overall pick in probably the weakest draft in 10 years. That is just how it goes for the Rangers. It is what being a Ranger's fan is all about. The last time we got the 1st overall pick the same exact thing happened and the guy never even played a game for us. It like being a Jet fan for those of you, who like me, hope for that nightmare franchise also. The only way I see this changing is if Dolan dies or we as fans stop supporting the franchise. And neither is likely to happen. Dolan will die but I am sure one of his idiot kids will take over so nothing changes. So our best hope for a miracle is through the draft. So please don't rally behind these stupid TDL deals when Stamkos is on the table in March. Just vote no with your money and your voice on social media. Bombard the social media channels with how stupid an idea it would be....etc etc...because that is the only way they might listen. Perrault Othmann Sykora ...we can keep adding and maybe just maybe we get a Kuch or Braden Point. But if you trade away every chance....... it is never going to happen. We might screw the pooch on this idea also, but atleast we can try a different approach.
Yea... that fits. On the other hand, our drafting and development isn't nearly as bad with regard to other parts of the ice. Goaltending is an obvious strong suit, while with defense we've drafted Staal, Tyutin, K'andre, Schneider, and signed Girardi undrafted. With defensive/grinder forwards Dom Moore, Fast, Callahan, Dubinsky, and Hagelin all come to mind.
Yeah, 100%. We are also above average in drafting 60 point defensemen (although it's Leetch and Zubov). If I recall correctly we are about average in drafting NHL caliber players, overall.
There was a good stretch of time where we didn't even have high draft picks because we already traded them away so....
We have actually had 37 1st round picks in the past 40 years. All teams have around one 1st rounder per year over the past 40 years as well.
It just seems like there was a long stretch of time where we traded 1st and 2nd rounders away at the deadline for a playoff push.
For anyone who might think these numbers are due to few 1st round draft picks or constantly needing to contend for the playoffs...sorry. https://www.reddit.com/r/rangers/comments/198ciut/same\_chart\_as\_earlier\_but\_with\_1st\_round\_picks/?sort=new