New York Rangers: Ranking the prospects by tiers

Tier 7

Tyler Wall, Brandon Crawley, Gabriel Fontaine

This tier is for players who probably don’t have a chance at being every day NHL players but could get a chance to play a few games at the level under extreme circumstances.

The most interesting name here is that of center Gabriel Fontaine.

There are some folks out there who I respect that have suggested that Fontaine may be a dark-horse candidate for the 13th forward job with the Rangers this upcoming season.

Fontaine is a former sixth round pick of the Rangers in 2016 (171st overall) who’s bread and butter is the defensive side of the game. The 21-year old has decent size at 6-foot-1, 196 lbs. He isn’t going to blow by you but he could skate well enough to play at the NHL level.

The question with Fontaine is will he be good enough to contribute offensively at the NHL level?

In a bottom six role in Hartford last season, Fontaine notched nine goals and nine assists in 57 games. Offensive production like that won’t get a guy noticed but Fontaine is still young enough to continue his development. He has Steven Fogarty written all over him, which is probably not a good thing.