Minus a first-round draft pick, the Rangers need to be better at uncovering late-round gems

Minus a first-round draft pick, the Rangers need to be better at uncovering late-round gems

The Rangers head into this week’s draft in Montreal with only four selections, the first coming in the second round at 63rd overall. Barring an unanticipated trade, the Blueshirts will sit out Thursday’s first round and will become the final team to call out a name the following day sometime around noon.

This represents quite a contrast from the previous five drafts in which the club owned an aggregate nine selections in the first round, yielding a (fill in your own modifier, please) crop featuring Lias Andersson, Filip Chytil, Vitali Kravtsov, K’Andre Miller, Nils Lundqvist, Kaapo Kakko, Alexis Lafreniere, Braden Schneider and Brennan Othmann.

(By the way, when the Rangers select this year, there is a chance that a center named Jack Hughes, this one out of Northeastern, will be available; how wild would that be to have one on either side of the Hudson?)

The absence of a first-rounder is nothing new for the Blueshirts, who went four straight years without one from 2013-2016, the picks having been traded in various deals for Rick Nash, Marty St. Louis and Keith Yandle.