Sean Day placed on waivers and will be bought out

The New York Rangers are terminating the contract of prospect Sean Day.

Add another failed New York Rangers draft choice to a long list.  The team placed defenseman Sean Day  on unconditional waivers with the intent of terminating his entry level contract. Day was the first player selected by the Blueshirts in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft, 81st overall in the third round.

Day was one of the most heralded players in Canadian junior hockey.   In 2013 he was granted “Exceptional Player Status” allowing him to be drafted into the CHL a year early at age 15.  He was only the fourth player to be granted that status following John Tavares, Aaron Ekblad and Connor McDavid.

Scouts were in love with his size, but even more so with his skating ability.  He got off to a rocky start in the OHL and he had to deal with some personal issues (his brother was convicted and sent to prison for causing a fatal car accident while driving drunk).

Unlike his predecessors, he didn’t live up to his reputation and in his draft year, he had slipped to the 59th ranking among North American skaters by NHL Central Scouting.  At any rate, the Rangers took him in the third round with the hope that he would turn a corner and live up to his potential.

He spent two more years in the OHL and his statistics declined as he scored only five goals while adding 42 assists in 50 games.

Signed to an Entry Level Contract in 2017, he spent the last two seasons splitting time between the Hartford Wolf Pack in the AHL and the Maine Mariners in the ECHL.   While he was a solid performer in the lower minor league with 35 points in 55 games, he didn’t make much of an impression in the AHL.

While he showed some promise in 2018-19 with the Wolf Pack, with 14 points in 46 games This season he had one goal and four points in 16 games with Hartford, hardly the production he had hoped for.

Here is one of the few highlights of his AHL career, an overtime winner for the Wolf Pack in November.

Day showed flashes of brilliance throughout his career, but was unable to put it together for the Rangers.   The additions of K’Andre Miller, Nils Lundkvist,  Matthew Robertson and Zach Jones dropped Sean Day even further down the depth chart.  At age 22, with no interest in him on the trade market, the team is ready to buy him out .

The 2016 draft

The Rangers didn’t have a first or second round pick in 2016, swapping their first rounder to Arizona in the Keith Yandle deal and the second round pick went to Carolina in the trade for Eric Staal.

The selection of Day was greeted with limited enthusiasm with most observers agreeing that it was a risky pick that had a high upside if Day could turn his game around. The good news is that of the 130 players selected after Day, only Victor Mete of the Montreal Canadiens,  Jesper Bratt of the Devils and Maxim Lajoie have had an impact in the NHL.

The bad news is that of those 130 players, 22 have made it to the NHL and more can be expected.  Ironically, the Blueshirts did select Finnish defenseman Tarmo Reunanen, goalie Tyler Wall and center Tim Gettinger after they picked Day and all three have NHL potential.

As for Day, he will be free to pursue his hockey career elsewhere and speculation is that the Belgian-born player will play in Europe.