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Who Will We Pick?


Rosenvold

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I hope I'm not overstepping any rules in here and perhaps the timing is off, but I missed some discussion and insight on the Rangers prospect pool before the coming summer with the first 1st-rounder in ages. I tried to compile a quick list of the best current prospects and their expected potential rating from what I've heard and seen:

 

Goalies

Igor Shestyorkin - A

Brandon Halverson - D

 

Defence

Ryan Graves - B

Sean Day - B

Sergey Zborovsky - C

Tarmo Reunanen - D

Calle Andersson - F

Alexei Bereglazov - B

 

Center

Cristoval Nieves - C

Adam Tambellini - D

Gabe Fontaine - D

Brad Morrison - D

 

Left Wing

Robin Kovacs - C

Ryan Gropp - D

Tim Gettinger - F

 

Right Wing

Malte Stromwall - D

Daniel Bernhardt - F

 

It's not really fair to talk about "holes" in the prospect pool - the Rangers need improvement in all departements except between the pipes. But they will only have one shot in the rifle in the draft, so I imagine they will go for a forward, although there are so many talented D-men in the late 1st round. I'm hoping for someone like Elias Pettersson or Kristian Vesalainen to drop a little and be possible targets for the Rangers, but I'm Scandinavian and probably not entirely unbiased here :D

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Could go back and forth for all eternity debating the letter grades, but this is a good list and a good thread.

 

I agree that a D-man late in the first is a smart pick. I like Connor Timmins. RHD and a great playmaker - 54 A and 61 points in 64 games this year. Should be there around when we pick.

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Rangers have a shitty system, but those ratings are even a little harsh. Gettinger was fine this season. Not an F. Gropp, as much as I give him flack, also has put in a performance that has gotten much stronger. I still don't trust his ability to make plays happen on his own, but he's not worthy of a D.

 

Pettersson won't come remotely close to the Rangers. He'll go top 10.

 

Vesalainen might very well. He's been dominant at the U18, but he's also a hulk in comparison to everyone else there on a stacked Finnish team. The fact that he didn't produce at the U20 is concerning. Tolvanen who's slated to go top 10 produced, but he didn't. Vesalainen is dominating his age and younger, but he hasn't shown that he can really be a force against more mature players despite his build. That concerns me.

 

Who would I pick? Probably Kailer Yamamoto. He's undersized, but in that 20-30 range, you really should be going BPA. He's a very good playmaker and something the team needs in terms of really being able to execute a pass and make plays happen. He's a guy that can run a powerplay and just an offense in general. The Rangers just don't have any dynamic players and he's about as close ad you're going to get. I get that they badly need defense and this is a draft with plenty of defensemen, but there's no one who'll come to the rescue anytime soon. Chances are you get Yamamoto up sooner and he's the exact type of player you need injected in.

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Could go back and forth for all eternity debating the letter grades, but this is a good list and a good thread.

 

I agree that a D-man late in the first is a smart pick. I like Connor Timmins. RHD and a great playmaker - 54 A and 61 points in 64 games this year. Should be there around when we pick.

 

Connor Timmins I bet the brass does too, after spending a lot of time in SSM watching Halverson and Gettinger. Best part is he went from 13 points his rookie year to 61 this year. That's a nice jump.

 

I feel this pick needs to be a RHD. Say what you want about the forwards in our farm system, but with Kreider (25) Fast (25), Lindberg (25), Miller (24), Zib (24), Hayes (24), Vesey (23), Buch (22) we have a lot of youth at forward in the NHL so even if only one or two of the current prospects make it we'll still be ok. We have all (minus the 7th but who cares) picks next year (at the moment anyway) and can look for some forwards next year. On the defensive side though, only one guy (Zborovsky) is a righty. Graves, Bereglazov, Pedrie, Day, and even Gilmour (if you wanna throw him in the mix) are all lefties. And I don't care how many of them are comfortable playing, or even prefer to play, the right side, I think you have to have at least 1 righty in the lineup.

 

I'd love Callan Foote (Adam Foote's kid), but he'll probably go in the teens. Another RHD that could be left on the board is Henri Jokiharju

 

I know we haven't a a first rounder in years but with it being in the late 20's (hopefully 32), i'd be ok trading it for say a 2nd this year and a 2nd next year if there is no RHD left on the board.

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All of those young forawards you mention are at the point where they're no longer cost controlled. It's great that they're young, but most are due for bigger contracts. You can't really keep them around in a cap league. You need to find a way to keep infusing ELCs and those early contracts. Most of those guys will be getting their third contract. Cap hits normally only go up from there.

 

Defense is a need but you operate via BPA. If that best player available is a defenseman, fine.

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All of those young forawards you mention are at the point where they're no longer cost controlled. It's great that they're young, but most are due for bigger contracts. You can't really keep them around in a cap league. You need to find a way to keep infusing ELCs and those early contracts. Most of those guys will be getting their third contract. Cap hits normally only go up from there.

 

Defense is a need but you operate via BPA. If that best player available is a defenseman, fine.

 

You don't have to draft the BPA. If you're targeting a RHD and the 1st round talent RHD you were targeting is off the board, you can trade down to target the 2nd round talent RHD you want. Targeting your organizational need and potentially turning one pick into multiple picks to get the best RHD you can is a fine strategy. The only way I deviate from that is if a forward that the Ranger brass views as a top 15 pick drops to them in the high 20's.

 

If you take the the $7.975M we are currently paying for Miller, Zib, and Hayes, and add the $14.3M we are paying Nash and Stepan who have $7.425M each to resign Miller, Zib, and Hayes. They wont cost near that much. Kreider is under contract for another 3 years. Fast and Lindberg (if both make it through the expansion draft) will get under $2M. Vesey and Buch are on their ELC's and won't get big contracts for a good 4-5 years.

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You've had a barren prospect system for years. Why wouldn't you target the BPA? What's the point of that? Why accumulate lesser picks when you're getting more of the same? You haven't had a top 30 pick through 4 straight drafts. Why make it the fifth one if there's still a talent on the board? Because the player doesn't meet a particular qualification? That doesn't make sense to me. Beggars can't be choosers. Right now the Rangers are beggars when it comes to the pipeline.

 

A right-handed defenseman is an organizational need, but they need some that can play right now. The odds of you getting one in this draft are slim. That just doesn't happen often and never with the Rangers.

 

I don't agree with that assumption regarding the handling of contracts, but that's not what this thread is ultimately about. All I'll say is just replacing your contracts with the same ones doesn't really solve your issues. You're still not cost controlled.

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You've had a barren prospect system for years. Why wouldn't you target the BPA? What's the point of that? Why accumulate lesser picks when you're getting more of the same? You haven't had a top 30 pick through 4 straight drafts. Why make it the fifth one if there's still a talent on the board? Because the player doesn't meet a particular qualification? That doesn't make sense to me. Beggars can't be choosers. Right now the Rangers are beggars when it comes to the pipeline.

 

A right-handed defenseman is an organizational need, but they need some that can play right now. The odds of you getting one in this draft are slim. That just doesn't happen often and never with the Rangers.

 

I don't agree with that assumption regarding the handling of contracts, but that's not what this thread is ultimately about. All I'll say is just replacing your contracts with the same ones doesn't really solve your issues. You're still not cost controlled.

 

Is there that much of a difference drafting a forward at say 28 to drafting a D we need at 48 and getting another pick in the 30-60 range the following year? There's been talk here recently about young D men we'd love to trade for. Brandon Montour 55th in 2014, Brandon Carlo 37th in 2015, Brett Pesce 66th in 2013, Justin Faulk was 37th in 2010, Gostisbehere was 78th in 2012, and those are just D men drafted in the second round. There are plenty of successful forwards also. The key is the scouts finding the players they want to fill what we need and drafting them in the right spot.

 

You have to have a list of players you are targeting before even going in. There can only be so many players they feel are worth the 28th pick and fit their organizational plan. If they are all gone, you trade down. For the Rangers that list should he high end forwards that might fall to them and RHD's.

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That's assuming they're all gone.

 

In a weak draft year like this one trading back doesn't accomplish much. You're moving back to the 2nd round to acquire a player that has a 31% chance of playing 100 NHL games regardless of whether or not they're any good. Are those some good players you picked out? Yeah. Are they easy to get? No. Those players are outliers. The chance of you drafting good players goes down as you move back. Those are players picked by lucky teams that knew their shit. Truthfully I don't have faith in the Rangers brass to make calls like that when they've made worse picks in deeper drafts.

 

It's simple. You don't forgo higher level, more guaranteed talent, so you can take risks on diamonds in the rough. You especially can't do that when you already don't have a farm at all.

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That's assuming they're all gone.

 

In a weak draft year like this one trading back doesn't accomplish much. You're moving back to the 2nd round to acquire a player that has a 31% chance of playing 100 NHL games regardless of whether or not they're any good. Are those some good players you picked out? Yeah. Are they easy to get? No. Those players are outliers. The chance of you drafting good players goes down as you move back. Those are players picked by lucky teams that knew their shit. Truthfully I don't have faith in the Rangers brass to make calls like that when they've made worse picks in deeper drafts.

 

It's simple. You don't forgo higher level, more guaranteed talent, so you can take risks on diamonds in the rough. You especially can't do that when you already don't have a farm at all.

 

Those were some good players I picked out. You want more? 2010: Toffoli 47th, Zucker 59th. 2011: Jenner 37th, Gibson 39th, Saad 43rd, Kucherov 58th, Trocheck 64th. Vesey went 66th. We picked Buch 75th, Stepan 51st, Anisimov 54th, Dubinsky 60th. Callahan was a 4th rounder. Fast and Hagelin were 6th rounders.

 

At the same time there are plenty of 1st round misses around the league. Every team makes good and bad picks. It comes down to, again, making your list of players you want and picking them in the best spot. If you only want 10 guys you think are worth the 28th pick, and they're all gone, then trade the pick. If the next guy on your list is mid 2nd rounder, then you call some teams in the middle of the second round and see if you can trade down. You don't draft a guy you have pegged around 45th at 28. And you don't draft someone you don't want at 28 just for the hell of it. There is nothing wrong with trading down. I don't get the, "You haven't had a top 30 pick through 4 straight drafts. Why make it the fifth one if there's still a talent on the board?" argument. There isn't that much of a difference in talent from 28th to 45th. It's less about the number and more about where you can get the guy you want.

 

Exactly what they did with Gropp. If Gropp makes it or not isn't the point. Gropp was the guy they were targeting and they traded up to get him.

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Great. Like I said, it happens sometimes not all the time. Statistics don't really lie.

 

Let's use 2005 as our base year and then go until the 2013 draft. That way we give those last prospects at least 3 post draft years to try and crack the NHL.

 

From 2005 to 2013 here's the Rangers ability to produce an NHL player with greater than 100 games per draft round.

 

1st Round: 50% (4/8) (Staal, Del Zotto, Kreider, Miller)

2nd Round: 25% (2/8) (Anisimov, Stepan)

3rd Round: 10% (1/10) (Duclair)

4th Round: 28% (2/7) (Pyatt, Weise)

5th Round: 0% (0/10)

6th Round: 25% (2/8) (Hagelin, Fast)

7th Round: 0% (0/6)

 

Of course, you have Buchnevich and Skjei who should break into those statistics within the next year, hopefully, but my point is just to look at the percentages in terms of the Rangers producing NHL players. You can list off all these names, but the chances of you actually getting players of those calibers is very small. Look at the talent the Rangers do get in later rounds. There really isn't any. They're producing NHL players here and there, but most of the Rangers drafted talent has come from the first round. It should come as no surprise that they nearly have 63% success rate in the first round. That's where the talent clearly is. The Rangers aren't good at finding talent later in the draft. Other teams might be, but this team hasn't demonstrated that. They make first round picks work well most of the time. McIlrath and Sanguinetti were shit picks, but if not for Cherepanov's death you're looking at nailing 6/8 first round picks with 10th overall being your highest.

 

The Rangers are good at using first round picks. They're average to below average on using late round picks. List off all these late picks that you want. Doesn't mean you're likely to get that talent. You have a first-round pick for the first time in five years. Use it. I could care less if there's no RHD available. No one is immediately stepping onto the roster.

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This is all well and good, but really, whether or not the Rangers are good at drafting in the first round or not is irrelevant. The question is whether or not they're better at drafting 28 (or wherever we end up) vs. drafting at, say, 45. The breakdown of those guys making the roster is far more important than whether or not the Rangers were could at picking in the top 20.
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But really, the pool is likely stronger at the blue line than up front. And after all, you do need twice as many forwards as defencemen. In the age 21-26 strata, the Rangers do have massive forward talent, but from 18-21 it's very thin. In the defence, you have Skjei, Bereglazov and Clendening plus a couple of decent prospects in Day, Zborovsky and Graves.
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Suck at late round picks, but you stopped at 2005. Going back to 2000 - 2004 (Since that is Hank's draft year and he is still playing) they drafted 13 players after the first round that played over 100 games. 7 of those played over 600 games. And you left out two 2nd rounders. Marc-Andre Cliche (not that he really counts) played 151 games and Michael Sauer played 98 before concussions ended his career, and it's still to early to say Nieves won't make it. so that would be 5 out of 8 second rounders in your time frame.

 

But that's a whole different argument. My point remains, unless a froward that the Rangers view as a top 15 pick falls to them, they should target a RHD. RHD is the biggest need. The forwards I listed early all 25 or younger can be the top six for the next 5+ years. And its a lot easier to fill in you bottom 6 with fringe prospects and free agents, than it is to fill in the entire right side of your defense. The only NHL Dman under 25 is Skjei a lefty, and out of our 6 prospects with a shot to make it only one is a righty.

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Pre 2005 is a completely different organization. With the exception of Sather, most of the upper-level management wasn't really the same. Especially in regards to scouting. Renney was out and Clark was in.

 

If you want to count those years as well the numbers go:

 

1st Round: 50% (6/12) (Montoya, Korpikoski, Staal, Del Zotto, Kreider, Miller)

2nd Round: 31% (5/16) (Tyutin, Dubinsky, Cliche, Anisimov, Stepan)

3rd Round: 19% (3/16) (Moore, Murray, Duclair)

4th Round: 42% (5/12) (Guenin, Potter, Callahan, Pyatt, Weise)

5th Round: 6% (1/16) (Dawes)

6th Round: 19% (3/16) (Zidlicky, Hagelin, Fast)

7th Round: 19% (2/11) (Lundqvist, Crabb)

 

I missed Cliche, but Sauer didn't play 100 games. Concussions ended his career, but you can't count him just the same way you can't count Cherepanov. Cherepanov could've been of the most talented players in the league. He died though. I'm not basing this off of what they could've done, but what they have done.

 

The numbers don't change too greatly. With the exception of a bunch of marginal players drafted in the fourth round, it shows that the Rangers draft on par with the league norm, but below some of the talent level acquired by other scouting staffs.

 

If the BPA is a defenseman. Take him. If he isn't I don't care as long as he's not a goalie. An RHD might an organizational need, but it's mostly a need on the current roster. As I've said, no pick is likely to be able to step on the roster immediately especially with how the Rangers have traditionally developed picks. You need good prospects. You shouldn't care what type they are if you don't have any to begin with.

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If the BPA is a defenseman. Take him. If he isn't I don't care as long as he's not a goalie. An RHD might an organizational need, but it's mostly a need on the current roster. As I've said, no pick is likely to be able to step on the roster immediately especially with how the Rangers have traditionally developed picks. You need good prospects. You shouldn't care what type they are if you don't have any to begin with.

 

We're going no where with this. Agree to disagree. At the end of the day, getting a RHD they desperately need in the 40's PLUS an extra pick next year would be more beneficial then taking a forward in the high 20's this year just so you can say you had a first round pick.

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It isn't just so you can say you had a first round pick, it's because statistically the Rangers are proven to turn first round picks into NHL players. Second round picks not nearly as well. Agree to disagree though.

Again, you have to do this with picks closer to where they are picking this year. It's easier to turn a top-20 pick into an NHLer than a 28 pick. For instance, you're more likely to hit with Chris Kreider (20) than Brady Skjei (28). But are you more likely to hit Brady Skjei (28) than Ryan Gropp (41)?

 

And you can't simply use games played as a metric and then discredit "marginal players" in the 4th round. Montoya and Korpikoski are as marginal as it gets, and, especially for Montoya, you could classify both of them as misses. I mean, why take Korpikoski at 19 when you could trade back to get Stepan at 51 and Weise at 111? You're not doing a very good job of arguing against that.

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Again, you have to do this with picks closer to where they are picking this year. It's easier to turn a top-20 pick into an NHLer than a 28 pick. For instance, you're more likely to hit with Chris Kreider (20) than Brady Skjei (28). But are you more likely to hit Brady Skjei (28) than Ryan Gropp (41)?

 

And you can't simply use games played as a metric and then discredit "marginal players" in the 4th round. Montoya and Korpikoski are as marginal as it gets, and, especially for Montoya, you could classify both of them as misses.

 

It's a simple statistical analysis. If you weed out the crap in the first round, Montoya and Korpikoski, and then weed out later crap, Cliche and Potter, you're still ending with similar numbers. I still counted those 4th round picks in their games played. Most studies of NHL success by draft pick are done using the 100 games played base. You could go further in depth with points or wins for goaltenders. That gets more convoluted.

 

Stastically the Rangers just don't really produce second round picks. Even if you want to look at NHL averages. The 28th pick has a "success" rate of 47.6% versus 36-40 at 34.3%, 41-45 at 39% and 46-50 at 35.2%. You are more likely to hit a better player. Not as much as you would with say the 20th, but it's still a better pick to have.

 

I mean, why take Korpikoski at 19 when you could trade back to get Stepan at 51 and Weise at 111? You're not doing a very good job of arguing against that.

 

Except that's not the option. The Rangers more often make a Kreider than a Korpikoski with that pick than they do a Stepan or Weise with those picks. If there were a greater chance of them turning talent with those picks, fine. There isn't.

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The pick number doesn't matter. 20, 28, 37, 51 makes no difference. The key is being able to develop a list of guys you want. In the 2007 draft the #19, 20, 25, 30, 33, 34, 36, 37, and 39 picks have never played an NHL game. #28, 32, 35, 38, and 41 have played less than 20 games. PK Subban was picked 43rd. Of those missed picks I mentioned, the Coyotes had 3 and Canucks had 2. Those teams made shitty lists.
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