Rangers Draft Review Pt. 1

First off, I think it's a terrible idea to go two years without a #1 pick in the NHL draft.   Going three years will be absolutely reckless, but they have a whole year to see if they can fix that.   The reason it's so terrible is if you are starting your draft in the second or third round, you have to get incredibly lucky to find an impact player -- your chances are much better if the have a first rounder.    A problem with a the productive Ranger system has not been producing pro's, but in producing impact players.   Thus they've had to hire Gaborik and Richards, and trade for Nash and St. Louis.   Nash and St.Louis are where all our #1's went and those deals will push the cycle to renew.   So the Rangers have put themselves behind the impact 8 ball at least until next year.

Anyway, onto the picks they did make.   During their draft preview yesterday on BlueshirtsUnited,  Gordie and Jeff Gorton said it was a good year to draft goalies.   Gordie revealed that he never wants to draft a goalie who's ceiling is backup, and that you can find guys like that elsewhere.   Anyway, after that I felt it was likely they'd take a goalie or two and they did.

I, for one, think that was a pretty good idea.   Just like it was a good idea for the Giants to draft a WR, an OL and a Back in a draft where those positions were deep, it was a good idea for the Rangers to draft into the strength of this draft and take goalies.

In Halverson and Shesterkin are two kinds of goalies.   Halverson in big and athletic like Hank at 6'4", while Shesterkin is 6'1 and considered really acrobatic.   So I like that they got some variety within that position group and some depth.   Stacjer never got healthy, so it was just Skapski in the system among drafted players.   Now we have Halverson is juniors and Shesterkin in the KHL.

If any of the three progresses we can either trade Talbot or replace when he's free.  

Btw, a notion on the Ranger Goalie drafting process:  somewhere in the brain trust there is either the believe or theory that a bigger goalies are going to revolutionize things.   Remember LaFleur?   And they've had Missaean around the system for a few years and he's like 6'8".    Halverson is 6'4" so not as super tall as those guys, but big.

Interestingly, two different scouts cited Halvorsen and Shesterkin as the "second best goalie in the group."    So, there's a chance we got impact either for us or in future trades with the picks.

So I think the addresses their lack of depth at goalie with two pretty high upside players.   I'll be back with some more thoughts, later.