New York Rangers: Some changes looming for the Entry Draft
The ravages of Covid-19 has had a ripple effect on all things hockey and the New York Rangers. Besides the suspension of the NHL season, there is uncertainty about the NHL Entry Draft.
Any other year the hockey world would be gearing up for the Stanley Cup playoffs. Meanwhile, teams on the outside of the playoff bubble, like the New York Rangers, would be dreaming about the prospect pool and calculating the odds of winning the draft lottery. This year is different.
The first issue facing the NHL is whether the season will even be allowed to finish. If the season does end, there will be a definitive list of teams in and out of the postseason and that will determine draft lottery eligibility. The goal will be to get all teams to have played an even number of games so there is no question of who is in the playoffs or not.
There has been some discussion of an expanded playoff pool of 24 teams so all contending teams will be in the mix. In that case the lottery could be restricted to the teams who miss the playoffs and those teams that lose in the first “play-in” round.
The real question mark will be if the season is really over and there will be no playoffs. In that case, the league will have to come up with some formula for draft position. It could be based on points per game, winning percentage or any number of potential calculators.
All of these uncertainties make speculation about draft position or lottery odds moot until the NHL decides how they will move forward and no one knows when that will happen. We will just have to wait.
Prospect uncertainties
The biggest issue facing NHL teams as they get into the draft will be incomplete scouting. When hockey ground to a halt, it put an end to a series of events that play a huge role in determining where players will end up in the draft rankings.
All NHL teams have their draft targets and have been following the careers of players for years. NHL Central Scouting has their mid-season rankings along with all of the hockey mavens who follow prospects to the draft.
However, most teams wait until the final postseason for draft eligible players to make their final decisions. That means the CHL playoffs, the NCAA Conference championships and the NCAA Tournament , the European league championships and most important, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) Under 18 World Championship. That U18 tournament was scheduled for April 16-26 in Plymouth, Michigan and was cancelled on March 13.
The U18 World Championship is the final opportunity for NHL scouts to see the top international prospects born after 2002 in action. The top ten international U18 teams would have participated and nearly all of the players can be found in the NHL Central Scouting’s midterm rankings.
A good example of a player affected by the cancellation would be Hendrix Lapierre, cited by Blue Line Station’s Brett Schultz as a potential first round target for the Blueshirts.
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Lapierre had an outstanding showing at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup last summer, leading all players in assists and points. Projected to be a top ten draft pick, he had an injury ridden season with the Chicoutimi Saguenéens of the QMJHL, playing only 19 games. A shoulder injury and a concussion has dropped him to 13th place among North American Skaters by Central Scouting.
If Lapierre had made it back for the QMJHL playoffs and the U18 Championship, it could have raised his draft profile. Now, he would regarded as a huge question mark.
It’s especially a problem for many European prospects. The U18 Tournament is the showcase of draft eligible players, far more than the U20 World Championships held in January. Many of the draft eligible players in the U20 tournament play second fiddle to top prospects who have already been drafted by NHL teams.
Considering that no one could anticipate this shutdown and that it happened so quickly, the grounding of all scouting will force teams to rely on earlier assessments, anecdotal information from sources familiar with the players and videos.
Question marks
There are few questions about who will be the top 10-15 picks in the draft. It’s more a question of where they will end up. Winger Alexis Lafreniere is the consensus top overall pick, but deciding how to rank Quinton Byfield, Dawson Mercer, Anton Lundell, Cole Perfetti and Marco Rossi as the top centers is still up in the air.
The NHL Entry Draft is always a gamble, especially in the later rounds. This summer, the first two rounds promise to be more of a crapshoot for NHL teams than in recent years.
We may see teams going for the sure thing, players with a “can’t miss” description as opposed to prospects with a higher upside, but more question marks.
In all likelihood, the two first rounders owned by the Blueshirts will end up somewhere between 15 and 25 and that’s where things get interesting. There’s also no doubt that there will be more gems unearthed in the later rounds when teams make picks based on incomplete information.
When it comes to the New York Rangers, we can only hope that their scouts were busy all winter and were not banking on the cancelled tournaments to guide them.
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