Where is the next great center for the Rangers?
If there is one position that is key to any hockey team it is center. Of course, goalies are crucial and a stud blueliner is essential to any winning team, but all great teams have been built around top centers. From Steven Stamkos and Brayden Point to Ryan O’Reilly to Evgeni Kuzentsov and Niklas Backstrom to Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, all recent Cup winners have had stud centers. Looking further back, do we need to bring up Wayne Gretzky, Bryan Trottier, Jean Beliveau et al? It took the arrival of Mark Messier to get the New York Rangers over the hump.
Domination of centers extends to the NHL Entry Draft. 25 centers have been picked first overall. How have the rest of the positions fared? There have been 15 defensemen, eight left wingers, eight right wingers and only three goalies. That’s 42% of all of the first rounders since the first draft in 1963.
It’s no mystery, great hockey teams are built starting at center.
This year’s version of the New York Rangers is in pretty good shape at center on their top two lines with Mika Zibanejad and Ryan Strome. After that, the situation is pretty bleak and that doesn’t apply just to the Blueshirts’ NHL roster, it’s organization-wide. How on earth did the Rangers get into this situation?
A drafting history
The Rangers have had 49 first round draft picks since the first one in 1965. Ten of them have been centers. What notable is that eight of those centers were take before 1999. Since 2000, the Rangers have picked two centers and that was in 2017 when they selected Lias Andersson and Filip Chytil.
The best center they ever drafted in the first round was Dave Gagner, who became a star after they traded him away. Other notables include Ron Duguay, Manny Malhotra and Bob MacMillan, but they aren’t exactly Hall of Fame material.
One thing the Rangers have always stressed is they don’t draft by position, they pick the best available player, no matter where they play. As a result, they have left themselves very thin at the one position that every hockey expert agrees is the most important.
If you want to draft a future NHL player, your best odds are in the first and second round. In the ten years from 2004 to 2014, 90% of first rounders made it to the NHL. 70% of second rounders make it. The percentages drop off substantially for players drafted in later rounds. Since the 2005-06 lockout, here’s how the Rangers have drafted in the first two rounds.
Centers: 7 (2 first round, 5 second round)
- 2019: Karl Henriksson #58
- 2017: Lias Andersson #7, Filip Chytil #21
- 2012: Boo Nieves #59
- 2009: Ethan Werek #47
- 2008 Derek Stepan #51
- 2006: Artem Anisimov #54
Left wingers: 6 (4 first round, 2 second round)
- 2021: Brennan Othmann #16
- 2020: Alexis Lafrenière #1, Will Cuylle #60
- 2015: Ryan Gropp, #41
- 2011: J.T. Miller #15
- 2009: Chris Kreider #19
Right wingers: 4 (2 first round, 2 second round)
- 2019: Kaapo Kakko #2
- 2018: Vitali Kravtsov #9
- 2010: Christian Thomas #40
- 2007: Alexei Cherepanov #17
Defense: 7 (7 first round,1 second round)
- 2020: Braden Schneider #19
- 2019: Matthew Robertson #49
- 2018: K’Andre Miller #22, Nils Lundkvist #28
- 2012: Brady Skjei #28
- 2010: Dylan McIlrath #10
- 2008: Michael Del Zotto #20
- 2006: Bobby Sanguinetti #21
Goalie: 3 (3 second round)
- 2018: Olof Lindbom #39
- 2014: Brandon Halverson #59
- 2007: Antoine Lafleur #48
Let’s not even get into the fact that so few have actually become bona fide NHL players. Consider the fact that you have to go back to 2008 and Derek Stepan to find a center drafted by the Rangers who actually made it as a top six pivot. Some will argue that J.T. Miller fills that role, but he was drafted as a winger.
If your measure of success is Stanley Cup championships, from 2004-2016 the Tampa Bay Lightning have drafted the following centers: Ross Colton (4th rd), Anthony Cirelli (3rd rd), Brayden Point (3rd rd), Cedric Paquette (4th rd), Vlad Namestnikov (1st rd), Steven Stamkos (1st rd) and Alex Killorn (3rd rd).
The Pittsburgh Penguins? Evgeni Malkin (1st rd), Sidney Crosby (1st rd), Jordan Staal (1st rd), Tom Kuhnahackl (4th rd), Oskar Sundqvist (3rd rd), Teddy Blueger (2nd rd), Jake Guentzel (3rd rd).
How they got here
It would be easy to blame the lack of centers in the organization on the scouting staff, but it must be noted that the Blueshirts traded away most of their first and second round picks in an attempt to win the Cup.
The Blueshirts, Glen Sather in particular, traded their first round picks in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 along with their second round picks in 2011, 2013, 2016 and 2017. It’s crucial now as players drafted in those years should be in or entering their NHL prime.
However, they did have seven first or second round picks in those years and they drafted only one center in those seven years. That was Boo Nieves in the second round in 2012. In doing so, they did miss on some centers who definitely would be an asset for the current Rangers.
- 2012: Rangers picked Boo Nieves 59th overall when Cedric Paquette, Alex Kerfoot and Andreas Athanasiou were available.
- 2013: Rangers take center Adam Tambellini 65th overall when Jake Guentzel and Andrew Copp were available
- 2014: The Rangers drafted goalie Brandon Halverson 59th overall when Brayden Point was still out there.
- 2015: The Rangers drafted wingers Ryan Gropp 41st overall and Robin Kovacs 62nd overall when Anthony Cirelli, Troy Terry,Adam Gaudette and Mason Appleton were still available.
- 2016: The Rangers traded their first and second round picks and drafted defenseman Sean Day 81st overall. They could have had Ross Colton who has become a regular for Tampa.
Thank you Jeff Gorton
The Rangers are not in a disastrous situation because of Jeff Gorton. He committed grand larceny in acquiring Mika Zibanejad from the Ottawa Senators and Ryan Strome from the Edmonton Oilers.
He got Zibanejad from Ottawa for Derick Brassard who the Rangers got in exchange for Marian Gaborik. So, in essence, the Rangers acquired a first line center in exchange for a winger that they had signed to a big free agent contract.
The Strome deal was pure theft as he flipped Ryan Spooner to the Oilers for Strome in a trade of two underachieving players. Spooner flamed out and is toiling in the KHL while Strome has revitalized his career playing in New York.
It’s unheard of for an established top six center to be traded in the NHL and the availability of one in free agency is rare. Matt Duchene, John Tavares Kevin Hayes and Tyler Seguin are the only ones who got as far as free agency in the last five years. It makes the Montreal Canadiens’ run at Sebastian Aho with an offer sheet a strategic move that made sense. It also give the Vegas acquisition of Jack Eichel the potential to be one of the best trades in NHL history.
So, the fact that Jeff Gorton was able to get TWO top six centers via trade simply amazing.
How bad was the 2017 draft?
Jeff Gorton and the Rangers knew they had an issue at center and he tried to remedy it by making a big move in 2017, trading Derek Stepan and Antti Raanta to Arizona for the seventh overall pick and Tony DeAngelo. He knew he had Mika Zibanejad and Kevin Hayes, but needed to improve depth at center in their pipeline.
The mistake was that he dealt for a high pick in a year when the draft class was one of the weakest in recent memory. Reports are the Blueshirts had their sights set on Elias Pettersson, but he was one of four centers (Nico Hischier, Nolan Patrick, Pettersson, Cody Glass) who were picked before the Rangers had their shot.
They went off the board and picked Lias Andersson, a pick that has turned out to be a disaster. While it was a weak draft, centers who have found success in the NHL who were picked after Andersson include Casey Mittelstadt (Buffalo #8), Martin Necas (Carolina #12), Nick Suzuki (#13 Vegas), Robert Thomas (#20 St. Louis), Eetu Luostarinen (#42 Carolina), Alexandre Texier (#45 Columbus) and Drake Batherson (#121 Ottawa).
For a while, it looked their selection of Filip Chytil would turn out to be the best after the top five, but Necas, Suzuki and Batherson are all established NHL players and have surpassed Chytil.
The current situation
The one oddity when it comes to the Rangers’ drafts is that in the last two years they have passed on centers with their high picks and selected other positional players. They had no choice with their selection of Alexis Lafrenière first overall, but they had options with other picks.
In 2020 the team traded up to draft Braden Schneider, a defenseman, when there were some excellent options at center, including Hendrix Lapierre, Connor Zary, Brendan Brisson and Mavrik Bourque. This is not a knock on Schneider who has all the tools to be an NHL starter, but considering the pipeline, did they desperately need a blueliner?
In 2021, the Rangers picked left winger Brennan Othmann when the team already has Chris Kreider, Artemi Panarin and Lafrenière ensconced at that position. Othmann has been having a fantastic season in the OHL, but hockey observers were surprised that the Rangers passed on centers like Chaz Lucius, Zachary Bolduc or Xavier Bourgault.
Here’s the Rangers depth chart at center and a look at their potential:
- Karl Henriksson, 20 – 2019 2nd round, #58: In his second full season with the Frölunda Indians of the SHL, he has two goals and six points in 18 games. If the Rangers don’t move him to North America next season, he may never come over.
- Adam Edström, 21 – 2019 6th round, #161: The big forward (6’54”) is in his third year with Rögle of the SHL. He may have a future as a power forward, but he’s not a top center.
- Oliver Tärnström, 19 – 2020 3rd round, #92: He is still playing junior hockey in Sweden for Rögle BK J20 and has shown a scoring touch, but he is at least two-three years away from coming to North America.
- Evan Vierling, 19 – 2020 5th round, #127: In his third season in the OHL for the Barrie Colts after not playing last season due to COVID, he has okay numbers, but doesn’t project as a top prospect and needs to be signed by June 1 or they lose his rights.
- Matthew Rempe, 19 – 2020 6th round, #165: Rempe turned some heads with his physical play at the Rangers’ projects camp. He’s huge at 6’9″, 240 lbs and is playing for the Seattle Thunderbirds in the WHL where he has seven goals in 28 games. He projects as a physical third or fourth line forward.
- Jayden Grubbe, 19 – 2021 3rd round, #65: Grubbe is not tearing up the WHL in the scoring race with six goals and 17 points in 34 games, but he is captain of the Red Deer Rebels and shows great leadership potential, but not as a top six center.
- Ryder Korczak, 19 – 2021 3rd round, #75: Korczak may have the best upside of all the Rangers’ center prospects. He’s in the top 10 in scoring in the WHL with 39 points in 34 games and was WHL player of the week ending December 19. He’s in his third season in the WHL and turns 20 in September so he is a few years away.
The best hope in the organization is Morgan Barron who is in his second professional season after starring at Cornell. The team has to hope that if Chytil fails to make it as their third line center, that Barron will have potential to fill that role. It still leaves them with a serious problem next season when they may lose Ryan Strome to free agency.
If that happens, they will be forced to deal one or more of their prized young defensemen to fill what could be a gaping hole in their lineup.
It’s an odd set of circumstances when it comes to the Rangers and their centers. There are well over a dozen centers in the Hall of Fame who were New York Rangers, but only Jean Ratelle, Bryan Hextall and Edgar Laprade were inducted because of their careers in New York and Ratelle took off his Rangers jersey for the last time 47 years ago.
With the pipeline relatively bare, it is up to Chris Drury to try to pull a rabbit out of his hat like Jeff Gorton did and find the center of the future for this Rangers team. History has demonstrated that he will need to do it if they want to succeed.
More. Lineup changes in Anaheim. light