This isn't the thread for this, but just look at our team now, our best players this season: Panarin, Zibanejad, DeAngelo, Fox, Strome... none were drafted by us. We're lucky we can sign FAs and make good trades because if we relied solely on drafting like Vancouver or Winnipeg our rebuild would be in big trouble.
How in the heck were we supposed to draft some of those guys? Zibanejad went 6th overall in 2011. We didn’t pick until 15th. We took JT Miller. He turned out alright. Five years later, we made the trade of the decade. We got Zibanejad as a 23 year old. He became a star and the best center we’ve had this century.
ADA was a first round pick in 2014. We didn’t have a first round pick in that draft. We got him in a trade for a center who was slowing down. The same trade that got us the pick used on Andersson. ADA just had the best offensive season by a Rangers defenseman in a generation. He too became a star with us.
So far, the first two examples were young players we identified, never had a chance to draft, who became stars AFTER they joined us.
Fox was drafted with the 66th pick in a draft where we didn’t have ANY picks until 81. Again, how could we draft him? We moved two second round picks to acquire him before he ever played a pro game. He looks like a star player.
So that’s three guys, who became stars with us, who we had no chance to draft.
We’ll keep going.
Strome was another player we couldn’t draft because he went one pick before Zibanejad. So it’s the same thing. We acquired him at 25, since then he’s played his best hockey for us.
With the exception of Panarin, who every team in the league passed on for nearly half a decade, there was no way to select any of those guys in the draft.
And the same guys who identify that young talent before they play in the pros, and whose notes were referenced when looking at players, are the same exact guys were lambasting for sucking at their job. The exact same guys.
But let’s be realistic for a second. If we acquired this young talent, and they sucked, we’d be holding their feet to the flames. But if it works out, it’s only because we already knew it was going to work out and it was an easy layup.
That’s what I find frustrating. We’ve created this whole narrative in our heads that never stands up to intense scrutiny whenever it’s really challenged. We’ve had people on here who have practically written term papers analyzing the Rangers performance the last 15 years and the results are highly favorable. Not perfect, but certainly nowhere near the wasteland that some have described it to be.
And that was before the last two years.
We honestly have the deepest talent pool we’ve had in 30 years.
Now, if we f*** this up, then by all means we can rack this organization over the coals. Because if we blow this, then indeed something is beyond broken. But the true measure of whether this front office and staff can develop stars and build a stacked team has only really started in earnest recently.
