New York Rangers: The best and worst draft classes of the 1990s
Like most teams in the history of the NHL Entry Draft, the New York Rangers have scored big in some and missed badly in others. Here are the best and worst Rangers’ draft classes of the 1990s.
It’s time to look at the New York Rangers drafts of the 1990s. We’ve gone through the entry drafts of the 1970s and 1980s and we are finally in the decade that produced a Stanley Cup championship.
While a championship helps determine the quality of a draft class, there are other criteria. Did they fill several needs? Did they draft a future superstar? Did they draft serviceable players though not elite? Or is it a comparision to the performance of players subsequently drafted by other teams?
For this piece, all of the above.
Best: Class of 1990
Standouts
Doug Weight (2nd round, 34th overall, center)
Sergei Zubov (5th round, 85th overall, defense)
Sergei Nemchinov (12th round, 244th overall, center)
Analysis
The Rangers squandered the 13th overall selection on defenseman Michael Stewart, who never played a NHL shift.
In doing so, they passed on forwards Brad May (2,248 penalty minutes) and Keith Tkachuk (1,065 points and 2,219 penalty minutes), Hall of Fame goaltender Martin Brodeur, and defenseman Jiri Slegr (838 penalty minutes and 232 points).
But the Blueshirts can be excused.
After all, they did choose three players who would become keys to the team ending its 54-year Stanley Cup championship drought.
The best pick was Zubov, a future Hall of Famer who would play over 1,068 games, score 152 goals, assist on 619 others, and win two Stanley Cups in 16 NHL seasons.
After helping the Unified Team win the gold medal in the 1992 Olympic Games, Zubov made an immediate impact for the Rangers with 31 points in 49 games in 1992-93.
The following season, he led the team with 89 points and added 19 more in the postseason to help the Rangers win the President’s Trophy and the Stanley Cup. In doing so, he became only the second defenseman in NHL history to lead a first-place team in scoring (Bobby Orr, 1969-70).
Zubov had 36 points in 38 matches for the Rangers during the lockout-shortened 1994-95 season, but was traded the following summer to the Pittsburgh Penguins with Petr Nedved for Ulf Samuelsson and future Hall of Famer Luc Robitaille.
Zubov won a another Stanley Cup in 1999 with Dallas, where he played 12 seasons before hip-related injuries limited him to 10 games in 2008-09. Those would be the last games of his NHL career. He officially retired in April 2011 and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2019.
Zubov is second among Rangers’ single-season leaders in assists with 77 in 1994, and in points by a defenseman. (Hall of Famer and Stanley Cup champion Brian Leetch had 80 assists and 102 points in 1992).
Weight spent two of his twenty NHL seasons in New York, posting 23 goals and 70 assists in 118 games.
Following two seasons at Lake Superior State, where he notched 50 goals and 94 assists, Weight made his Broadway debut in the 1991 playoffs. The following season, he played 53 games as a rookie and scored eight goals and added 22 assists for 30 points.
In 1992-93, he put up 15 goals and 25 assists for 40 points in 65 games before he was, to his surprise, traded that March to the Edmonton Oilers for left wing/super pest Esa Tikkanen.
At the time, trading a talented 22-year-old center for a player six years his elder and with significant miles on his odometer was a questionable optic (at best) for the Rangers.
However, armed with an uncanny ability to irritate opponents and the experience of helping Edmonton win four of its five Stanley Cups, Tikkanen proved very useful to the Rangers during playoff runs in 1994 and in ’97.
He notched 23 goals and 31 assists in 1993-94, then added eight more points in the playoffs, including the lone assist on Stephane Matteau‘s game winner in double overtime versus the Devils in Game Seven of the conference finals.
Nearly five weeks after celebrating with teammates and fans in the ticker-tape parade on June 17 in New York, Tikkanen was off to St. Louis, traded with Doug Lidster for Petr Nedved.
Over parts of the next three seasons, Tikkanen played a combined 298 games for the Blues, New Jersey and Vancouver. In March 1997, he was traded back to the Rangers with Russ Courtnall for Brian Noonan and Sergei Nemchinov.
His return paid off for New York in the playoffs that spring.
Tikkanen scored twice in overtime in the opening round against the Florida Panthers, including the series clincher in Game Five.
In the conference semifinals that went five games, he had four goals, propelling the Rangers to an upset of the Devils, who won the Atlantic Division that season with 104 points. He added two tallies in a 4-1 series loss to Philadelphia in the conference finals.
Apparently impressed with his postseason performance, the Panthers signed Tikkanen the following September.
The Washington Capitals, needing grit and experience, traded for Tikkanen in March 1998 and advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals, where they were swept by the Detroit Red Wings.
In October 1998, Tikkanen signed again with the Rangers, notching three assists in what proved his final 32 NHL games.
Nemchinov spent six of his eleven NHL seasons with the Rangers, notching 105 goals and 120 assists for 225 points. In 52 postseason matches for the Blueshirts, he posted 22 points, including two goals and five assists in the 1994 playoffs.
As an added bonus for Rangers fans, the New York Islanders drafted five forwards in rounds eight to 12, all before Nemchinov, and none made the NHL.