The Rangers Prospect Report 10

The best way to start the New York Rangers prospect report has to be by showing what the play of the week was. Noah Laba's first goal of the season came just 21 seconds into overtime as it gave his No. 12 Colorado College Tigers an opening night 4-3 overtime win over Rasmus Larsson's Northern Michigan Wildcats.

Scoring game-winning goals is what Laba does best as he had seven of them last season and four of them came in overtime. Laba is in our eyes the top Rangers prospect because he is a first line center.

Yes, Gabe Perreault is a great prospect, but he isn't a center who wins faceoffs, he isn't a player who wins defensive player of the year awards, and he doesn't score the big goals.

Laba got his season off right going 1-1-2 on a game-high six shots and a +3. Laba also was also 16-7 on his faceoffs.

On Saturday, Laba set a career high with four assists as Colorado College won 6-1 over Northern Michigan. What was even better about Saturday night was that Laba recorded them on four consecutive goals.

In the second period with Colorado College already up 2-1, Laba earn the primary assist on their third goal, In the third period, Laba had the primary assist on the Tigers fourth goal and then earned secondary assist on the fifth and sixth goals.

In addition, Laba was credited with just one shot but was a +3 and was 13-5 on his faceoffs. Altogether Laba was 1-5-6 on seven shots with a +6 and was 29-12 (70.7% faceoff win rate) to start his season.

Nathan Aspinall had two goals in back-to-back games on Saturday and Sunday for his Flint Firebirds as they split two games this weekend. Since both goals were nice why not show them from the Rangers 2024 fifth-round pick.

This was from Sunday:

And this goal was from Saturday and got to point out that Aspinall is another of the Ranger's 6'7 collection of forwards:

For the weekend, Aspinall was 2-0-2 to improve his season totals to 3-3-6 after seven games.

Sophomore forward Gabe Perreault was 1-1-2 as his second-ranked Boston College Eagles split two games with fourth-ranked Michigan State. Sorry no highlights as the Eagles were on the road for these two games.

What there was to like was seeing Perreault looking for his shot first instead of what he did last season which was to defer to his linemates. The best way to describe Perreault is a smaller-sized Martin St. Louis and that is a good thing.

Teammate and sophomore defenseman Drew Fortescue may not have the offensive firepower that Perreault has but what Fortescue is happens to be a defensive stopper who with a little more offense would actually be closer to being NHL ready than Perreault.

If you haven't seen Fortescue play, then the best way to describe him is a poor man's Ryan McDonagh as while Fortescue isn't the super physical player that McDonagh is but what he is a really good defender.

Fortescue since the middle of his freshman season has been the left side of the top defensive pair for Boston College. Remember Boston College has been in the top five teams the last two seasons so that says a lot for Fortescue.

E.J. Emery the Rangers 2024 first round pick made his NCAA debut for sixth-ranked North Dalota and if you thought the hype about him was too much then take a look here:

Watch closely and look at this pass from Emery:

That is how one makes a debut on the first goal of the season for his team as they went on to earn a 5-2 win over 11th-ranked Providence College in the USA Hockey Hall of Fame game. Emery was 0-1-1 for the game on one shot but a +2 and was credited with two blocked shots.

Going to add one more to this week's report as 2023 sixth round pick Ty Henricks made his NCAA debut for the Western Michigan Broncos as they swept a two-game series with Ferris State.

Henricks was 1-1-2 on the weekend scoring his first ever NCAA goal Friday night:

Henricks is "smallish" compared to recent Ranger draft picks as he is only 6'5 but he has the hands of a smaller player and the offensive talent to go with it. What has held him back has been inconsistent play as you cannot score if you don't shoot the puck.

Henricks can be a solid power forward if he can find a way to be more consistent.

Let's see who makes this list next week.