Breakaway Takeaways – March 19th

[text_output]With the Rangers all but eliminated from playoff contention, the focus of fans recently has shifted towards the future. Particularly, fans are interested in how the young members of the Rangers are performing, how the prospect pipeline is developing and this summer’s NHL entry draft. Tomorrow we will be releasing our draft prospect rankings along with some write-ups regarding players the Rangers could realistically target in the slots they likely will be drafting, so today I want to focus on the prospect pipeline. Specifically, I want to point out how impressed I am by how much progress the Rangers have made towards restocking the proverbial prospect cupboards in about 10 months.

This time last year, the Rangers were gearing up for their seventh straight playoff birth, and had a prospect pool that was widely regarded as one of the three worst in the entire NHL. The Rangers had good goalie prospect depth with the likes of Shestyorkin, Huska and Wall, but beyond that the cupboards were practically barren.

Fast-forward to today, and the Rangers easily have one of the most improved prospect pipeline in the NHL over that time span. The Rangers now have three players that are widely regarded as top-50 prospects in the entire NHL—Igor Shestoyrkin, Lias Andersson and Filip Chytil—and a number of other prospects that easily project as strong NHL contributors, such as Brett Howden, Libor Hajek and Yegor Rykov. In fact, Chris Peters, prospect writer for ESPN, recently wrote an Insider article ranking the top-10 prospect pipeline systems in the NHL, and he had the Rangers ranked seventh![/text_output][image type=”circle” float=”none” src=”2335″ alt=”” href=”” title=”” info_content=”” lightbox_caption=”” id=”” class=”aligncenter” style=””][text_output]Say what you want about ESPN’s NHL coverage, but Chris Peters is a good prospect analyst, and I personally value his opinion. Regardless, the fact that any person that gets paid to analyze NHL prospects now has the Rangers rated as a top-10 system, given where the pipeline was a year ago, is a huge win for the Rangers, and should be celebrated by fans. It should be noted that these prospect rankings do not include the picks that Rangers have accumulated as well, so if the Rangers draft well in this upcoming draft with their war chest of top-100 picks—they have seven in the first three rounds, and three in the first—they can easily crack the top-five very soon. Also, if you don’t want to take the word of an ESPN hockey write, take the words of myself and Josh Khalfin, as we both agree that this ranking seems about right.

So, if you are getting frustrated with the fact that the Rangers recent performance has hurt their 2018 first round pick standings, I don’t blame you. However, you can at least take a look at the progress the prospect pipeline has made in such a short time and be happy. The Rangers comfortably have one of the most improved prospect cupboards over the past year, and I for one cannot wait to see what they do to further bolster it in this summer’s draft.[/text_output][image type=”thumbnail” float=”none” src=”2336″ alt=”” href=”” title=”” info_content=”” lightbox_caption=”” id=”” class=”aligncenter” style=””]