First overall selection to Edmonton in 2010. First overall selection to Edmonton in 2011. First overall selection to Edmonton in 2012. Seventh overall selection to Edmonton in 2013. Third overall selection to Edmonton in 2014. First overall selection to Edmonton in 2014. First overall selection – who was Connor McDavid by the way – to Edmonton in 2015. Fourth overall selection after Edmonton in 2016.
And do you know how many playoff rounds Edmonton has won over the past 11 years? That would be one, and that is with the player who may have the most extensive offensive skills in NHL history.
Look, Monday turned out to be a lovely day in Rangerstown. There’s no reason to rain on the Blueshirts’ parade after the jaw-dropping lottery win, where the 12.5 percent chance the team had to score the first overall win in the entry-level draft turned into a 100 percent attempt to get the proposed franchise Add winger Alexis Lafreniere to a stable of up and coming youngsters with the first overall win in the October draft.
Let’s be honest. That was madness. The Rangers finished 16th overall in 2005 when they entered the lottery as one of four teams with the best chance of reaching number 1 and the right to pick Sidney Crosby. The league introduced a retrospective cap recapture component to the collective agreement after the 2012-13 lockout to punish the blueshirts for frontloading Brad Richards’ signing.
So yes, right, for those who believe that the Rangers’ win in this lottery was somehow rigged.
The Rangers will be able to add great talent at Lafreniere that over time should become an important part of any Stanley Cup competitor. But please don’t get beyond yourself. The blueshirts won’t be in that position next year and trying to short circuit the only two year old rebuilding process based on the result of the lottery raffle would be a terrible mistake.
And I’m confident that President John Davidson, who oversaw the St. Louis and Columbus remodeling, and General Manager Jeff Gorton understand that there are no shortcuts to becoming a consistent contender. After all, that is the goal. If the Rangers just wanted to be a playoff team, there would have been no letter in February 2018.
There’s no doubt that adding a talent like Lafreniere speeds the process up, just like Adam Fox, Kaapo Kakko, Ryan Lindgren and Igor Sheshterkin did last season. But there is still a lot to be done in order to become a consistent contender.
There’s one more final analysis on the Rangers’ terrible performance in their three-game qualifying round by Carolina. Gorton stated that he and the decision makers place significant weight on the team’s performance under the bladder, as opposed to the work done in the 37-28-5 regular season that ended five months ago.
“We’re still trying to keep this up, but I think it’s pretty important,” said the GM. “Even though it was three games that we lost, we have to consider a lot of things that we could do differently as we evolve to become a more difficult team. We look at this.
“I don’t want to dismiss the 70 games and how far we’ve come as a team and where we were before the break. We were in a good place, we won a lot of games, a lot of young people did a lot of good things, [Artemi] Panarin had a special year, Mika [Zibanejad] had a special year [Igor] Shesterkin had come [Adam] Fox, so many good things have happened. I don’t want to turn this down at all and I’m excited about everything.
“But at the same time, we’d make fun of not asking why we were taken out so easily. So let’s go through this for sure now. “
The Rangers moved in 2020-21 essentially the moment the team received their eviction notice to exit the bubble. But even with that lottery win and the delicious prospect of adding the universally recognized top view to the mix, this off-season can’t be between 2020 and 21st.
It has to be around 2021-22 and 2022-23 and 2023-24. There are no shortcuts to continued success – the penguins with Marc-Andre Fleury # 1 in 2003, Evgeni Malkin # 2 in 2004 and Sidney Crosby first in 2005 didn’t make the playoffs until 2007 – and it would be one terrible mistake for the hierarchy to act differently.
The Rangers have Shesterkin. You have Kakko. You have Fox. You have Panarin and Zibanejad and Chris Kreider. You’ve got K’Andre Miller and Nils Lundkvist. They have a second first round coming from the canes this year. You have Jacob Trouba and Ryan Lindgren. You have Filip Chytil. You have Tony DeAngelo. You have talent.
And they have the first choice in the 2020 draft.
To the future and a very, very bright future. But it’s one that New York management shouldn’t confuse with the next year. For good things – great things indeed – come those who wait.
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