I think context matters so much with this, though. The Rangers will celebrate the 100th anniversary in 2026-2027 and had a stellar team to begin with, but with the rights and sponsorship situation carving up territory, the Rangers had no access to youth. Montreal and Toronto (and Detroit) had a decent monopoly on Junior team sponsorship, and would repeatedly sign players to so-called "A" forms (an annual "tryout rights renewal") - so a player brought up through a Montreal-sponsored team would sign this form every year as a rights retention mechanism for the Canadiens - or "C" forms (professional rights forms). It froze out Chicago, New York, and Boston for a while as they'd only really get the late bloomers, so from 1940 to the 1967 expansion, the Rangers, Bruins, and Blackhawks made a combined 12 finals APPEARANCES - and that gets worse when you balance out that 4 of those appearances were in the WW2 years, where Canada was involved in the war earlier (as it was British Canada at the time). A lot of the "breakthroughs" were dumb luck - Stan Mikita fleeing Slovakia with his family and just luckily landing in territory in Ontario that had a Blackhawks sponsorship team, or the Wings giving up too early on Bucyk and dealing him (though to be fair, they got Sawchuk in that trade).
The Rangers weren't on "even footing" until the late 1960s, when the modern draft was conceptualized. Then, these endless rights renewals and sponsorship deals started falling under intense legal scrutiny, and the monopoly broke. And pretty quickly, they competed.
So...yeah, I mean...Kreider's probably not yet a top 5 Ranger; for many, he may never be. But he's a few seasons away from being one of the most prevalent names in the franchise record books if he isn't already, and it's at least somewhat understandable why that is.