Before the start of the 2024-25 season, the New York Rangers could be without all three of their top-10 draft picks that were made from 2017-19.
Yes, it’s entirely possible – perhaps even more likely than not – that the Blueshirts will part ways with Kaapo Kakko, the No. 2 overall pick in 2019, this summer after five seasons in which he became a solid possession driver and strong defensive player with excellent underlying metrics, but has failed to translate that into high-end offensive production. Due a new contract as a restricted free agent with arbitration rights, general manager Chris Drury – who didn’t draft Kakko – might covet his salary slot to make potentially substantial changes to the roster.
If that proves to be the case, it would mean the Rangers’ run of four consecutive top-10 selections – one made all the more exciting for the franchise when the draft lottery ping-pong balls delivered back-to-back top-two picks – will have yielded only one high-end asset in Alexis Lafreniere, the No. 1 choice in 2020 who looks to be on his way to stardom after a breakout 2023-24 regular season and playoffs. The hit on the consensus top prospect in a draft, however, is hardly consolation for the missed opportunities the three years before that.
No team gets the draft right all the time – or even close to it – including the ones who are the most successful at player procurement. The Eastern Conference champion Florida Panthers, who have built an outstanding roster that’s in the Stanley Cup Final for the second straight year, certainly love bruising defenseman Aaron Ekblad, the first overall pick in 2014. Yet it’s hard to believe that give a second chance, they wouldn’t have selected forward Leon Draisaitl, who went third to the Edmonton Oilers that year and appears to be on a Hall of Fame track – and who will go head-to-head with Ekblad for the right to lift the Stanley Cup this month.
To miss on a potential elite prospect three times in a row comes with a cost, one that the Rangers have been starting to realize. So without further ado, let’s take a look at what could have been from that disappointing stretch:
Lias Andersson, 7th Overall, 2017
This pick came with great anticipation from fans and the organization, it being the Blueshirts’ first in the opening round of the draft since 2012. After trading away the previous four in deadline deals for the Cup-contending outfits of John Tortorella and Alain Vigneault, the club was entering a transitional period despite having made the playoffs that season. Lias Andersson, a Swedish center, came into the draft as the third-ranked European player by NHL Central Scouting.
Despite that, it’s difficult to see what positives the Rangers’ own scouting revealed about Andersson before they selected him. Not a particularly good skater and lacking in high-end puck skills, reports swirled that general manager Jeff Gorton’s front office had perceived Andersson to be among the most NHL-ready prospects, due in part to his supposed leadership. Yet a major red flag surfaced in the 2018 IIHF World Junior Championships, when Anderson, the captain of Team Sweden, bizarrely threw his silver medal into the stands after the Swedes fell to Team Canada. Viewed by some as a positive sign of a burning desire to win and a hatred of losing, others saw an immature young man who lacked the capacity to deal with adversity.
The latter proved to be correct, as Andersson’s headache of a tenure with the organization revealed a player that was anything close to NHL-ready. Now with the Montreal Canadiens, Andersson had a successful 2023-24 season for their American Hockey League affiliate, the Laval Rocket, recording 21 goals and 24 goals in 53 games. Andersson’s NHL totals, though, stand at 17 points in 110 games.
Who the Rangers Could Have Had Instead
The list is long and distinguished in a draft that produced numerous NHL centers in the first round. Casey Mittelstadt (eighth overall), Gabriel Vilardi (11th), Martin Necas (12th), Nick Suzuki (13th), Josh Norris (19th) and Robert Thomas (20th) were all available for a Rangers team that remains largely bereft of young talent down the middle.
Mitigating Factors That Make the Miss Less Painful
Gorton gave himself what ended up being an immediate shot at redemption by taking Filip Chytil with his second first-rounder that year, 21st overall. Despite issues with concussions, Chytil has shown signs of an impending breakout dating to the 2022 playoffs, and his return from what was though to be a season-ending head injury for this postseason was yet another encouraging sign that the highly-talented 24-year-old center might be on the verge of taking the next step.
Furthermore, Gorton also worked some more magic later by somehow extracting a second-round pick from the Los Angeles Kings for Andersson. The selection, 60th overall in 2020, yielded power forward Will Cuylle, who put together a strong rookie season in 2023-24 and looks like a middle-six keeper who plays with speed and edge.
Still, the aforementioned centers who were on the board when the Rangers drafted all look to be on their way up. Necas, Suzuki and Thomas have recorded seasons of 70-plus points, while Norris scored 35 goals two seasons ago. Though the Rangers have veterans Mika Zibanejad and Vincent Trocheck manning the middle on the top two lines, not coming away with a top center from a draft loaded with them hurts now, and is sure to even more in the not-too-distant future. If Gorton was going to reach with the seventh overall pick – which Andersson’s selection seemed to be at the time – he would have been better off doing so with any number of more highly-regarded prospects who went lower in the round.
Vitali Kravtsov, 9th overall, 2018
Speaking of reaches, more than a few rival general managers had to be scratching their heads over the choice of right wing Vitali Kravtsov, who like Andersson garnered the third spot amongst European skaters for the 2018 draft from Central Scouting, but who was something of an unknown around the league. It appears now as if he was also largely an unknown for Gorton and the Rangers, who coveted Kravtsov’s size, skating ability and heavy shot, but who again ended up with a sullen and immature player unsuited to the mental demands of playing in the NHL.
The Blueshirts spent a second straight pick on a player who left the organization in what became yet another saga. Rumors of a rift with the front office persisted, but Kravtsov, like Andersson, came across as entitled and uncomfortable with his situation. Despite some promising moments in his 48 games with the Rangers, Kravtsov appeared unprepared and unwilling to do what was necessary to earn a spot in the best hockey league in the world.
Related: Rangers Have Real Trouble Drafting in the Top 10
Finally traded to the Vancouver Canucks toward the end of the 2022-23 season, he appeared in 16 games with them, but did not garner rave reviews from coach Rick Tocchet. Returning to the Kontinental Hockey League to play with his old team Traktor, Kravtsov spent the 2023-24 season there and seems highly unlikely to play in the NHL again.
It would be a hard sell to convince anyone that the Rangers did any real due diligence on Kravtsov’s makeup and personality before drafting him, in some ways evoking the Pavel Brendl disaster of 19 years earlier. This pick will probably always be a mystery, up there with some of the club’s biggest draft mistakes.
Who the Rangers Could Have Had Instead
With the pick that followed Kravtsov’s selection, the Oilers took defenseman Evan Bouchard. Yikes.
What makes this worse is that Bouchard would have been a perfect fit at the time for the Rangers, who needed puck-moving talent on the backline following the trade of Ryan McDonagh that February. The Rangers, though, passed on Bouchard, a commodity as a right-handed shooting defender who had piled up 87 points in 67 games for London of the Ontario Hockey League during the 2017-18 season.
The 24-year-old is now doing that in the NHL, recording 82 points in 81 games with a plus-34 rating in a breakout season of 2023-24. Bouchard, who quarterbacks Edmonton’s lethal power play, had 35 points with the man advantage this season, and his powerful, accurate shot – nicknamed the “Bouch Bomb” – makes him another weapon to go with superstars Connor McDavid and Draisaitl.
Defenseman Noah Dobson, who also busted out in 2023-24 with 70 points, went 12th to the New York Islanders in 2018, while winger Joel Farabee, with 82 goals over his five seasons, was picked 14th by the Philadelphia Flyers. It’s the Blueshirts’ failure to identify Bouchard as a special player, however, that looms largest.
Mitigating Factors That Make the Miss Less Painful
None, really. The Rangers have assembled some outstanding young pieces on their blue line, but that group would look a whole lot better with Bouchard or Dobson there as well. Maybe the only saving grace here was Gorton’s trade heist of the rights to 2021 Norris Trophy winner Adam Fox from the Carolina Hurricanes, which gave the Blueshirts a star right-handed shooting defenseman of their own.
Still, there’s no reason Fox and Bouchard couldn’t have co-existed in giving the Blueshirts an even more offensively-dangerous defense corps. They did take two defensemen with their next two first-rounders that year, apparently scoring on K’Andre Miller at No. 22 and more or less missing on Nils Lundkvist at 28. Miller looks like part of the future core, while Lundkvist, a smaller offense-first player, was traded to the Dallas Stars for first- and fourth-round picks in 2023. The first-rounder was used in a trade-deadline deal that year for the St. Louis Blues’ Vladimir Tarasenko and Niko Mikkola.
Lundkvist has had some success with the Stars, but has yet to establish himself, and his 5-foot-11, 190-pound frame may continue to be an issue in his NHL career.
Kravtsov’s failure to develop into a productive NHL player has contributed to the Rangers’ ongoing inability to fill their hole on the right side of the top six. The trade of Pavel Buchnevich in 2021 and Kakko’s trouble in locking down a spot on the top two lines has forced Drury to trade for help at that position at the last three deadlines. Kravtsov’s game was often compared with Tarasenko’s when he was drafted. Instead, the Blueshirts had to acquire the real Tarasenko as a rental because Kravtsov proved to be anything but a reasonable facsimile.
The search for a top-six right wing will continue on into this summer.
Kaapo Kakko, 2nd Overall, 2019
The Finnish right wing’s stock had risen so dramatically in the season leading up to the draft that questions loomed over whether the New Jersey Devils were better off taking Kakko instead of presumptive top prospect Jack Hughes with the first overall pick. Nowadays, of course, those sentiments come across as quaint. Hughes has blossomed into a superstar in Newark, recording 229 points in 189 games over the past three seasons.
In contrast, Kakko hasn’t come close to justifying his selection one spot after Hughes, totaling 117 points in 300 career games. The precocious talent that allowed him to dominate Finland’s Liiga as a teenager, and add on an eye-opening performance at the 2019 worlds, has not shown up with any level of consistency in the NHL. Kakko’s 18 goals and 22 assists in 2022-23 were career highs, but he took a step back amidst injury and underperformance last season – a familiar theme in his five seasons in New York.
Kakko is anything but a bad player, but he profiles now as a solid forward who can help a team in the middle six – not one in possession of an explosive skillset trying to get out. The Rangers and Kakko may be at the point where parting ways is best for both parties, with Kakko possibly in need of a fresh start in new surroundings.
Who the Rangers Could Have Had Instead
Though this question is more or less moot when it comes to Kakko, who was considered a slam-dunk top-two pick along with Hughes that year, there are a number of players who look to be on their way to being what the Rangers expected Kakko to develop into. Forwards Matt Boldy (12th to the Minnesota Wild) and Cole Caufield (15th to the Montreal Canadiens) each posted 60-plus point seasons in 2023-24, and the Detroit Red Wings have high hopes for big defenseman Moritz Seider, who has recorded at least 40 points in each of his three seasons after being selected sixth overall.
Mitigating Factors That Make the Miss Less Painful
In drafting Andersson and Kravtsov, the Rangers ignored more highly-rated, better-known options on the board, bringing into question the front office’s process in making those selections – and thus, rendering them all the more difficult to stomach today. In the case of Kakko, there’s no realistic avenue to second-guessing the pick. The 2019 draft was headlined by Hughes and Kakko, who were universally viewed as a cut above everyone else. The Blueshirts did what any other team drafting second that year would have: Sit back and see which of the duo fell to them.
In Kakko, the entire NHL saw a big, skilled forward who had made easy work of older, more experienced players in a highly-regarded league that season, and then was one of the best players at worlds with six goals and an assist in 10 games to lead Finland to the gold medal.
Moreover, though the 2019 draft has produced first-round standouts such as Boldy, Caufield and Seider, it doesn’t appear that the Rangers missed on a franchise-level talent just below the second pick – at least to this point. That’s what happened in Andersson’s draft, when Cale Makar dropped to fourth overall. Trevor Zegras, the ninth selection in Kakko’s year, was starting to look like such a player until injury and questions about attitude derailed his rise in 2023-24.
Rangers May Have to Just Accept Missed Opportunities of 2017-19
Lafreniere’s breakout in 2023-24 was a revelation for the Blueshirts, but it’s also distracted from the disappointments of the three straight top-10 picks before the 22-year-old was selected to start the 2020 draft. Drury has built what’s shaping up to be a strong core of young talent that’s waiting in the wings, but the very real possibility exists that the club will soon have only one player remaining from that golden four-year opportunity to load up with high first-round talent. One or two more top-10 hits from the stretch might have helped the Rangers get over the championship hump, and perhaps kept them in contention for the Stanley Cup for even more years to come.
Drury may very well accomplish that anyway after drafting players like Gabe Perreault, Adam Sykora, Brennan Othmann and Bryce McConnell-Barker, though it’s too early to know. Unfortunately, he isn’t benefiting from those first-round selections that he didn’t make, having taken over as GM in 2021.
Drury may feel he has no choice but to trade Kakko, who could return some higher-round draft picks that the Rangers could certainly use after dealing numerous ones away in deadline deals while pursuing the Cup for the last three seasons. Surely, though, Drury wishes he had a version of Kakko who approximates the career arc of Lafreniere – not to mention a couple of other players from the previous two first rounds of the draft who are doing just that for other teams.
