With the 2023 NHL Draft in the rearview mirror, many New York Rangers fans would be hard-pressed to name any of their team’s bottom-round selections made at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena last month.
Sure, they might still be aglow over the first-round pick of Gabriel Perreault, widely regarded as a top offensive prospect who was available at 23rd overall because of the loaded talent pool in this year’s draft. They might be intrigued by third-round choice Drew Fortescue, a defenseman from the U.S. National Team Development Program who was coached by new Rangers assistant Dan Muse.
But Rasmus Larsson? Dylan Roobroeck? Ty Henricks?
Those names might not mean much to anyone but the most attentive members of the fan base. The Rangers drafted all of them in Rounds 5 and 6, representing their three lowest selections in Nashville. All were taken with pick 152 or below.
Yet a look at the history of the franchise shows that the Rangers have occasionally struck gold with the waning picks of the draft – sometimes to surprisingly outstanding results, sometimes to even Hall of Fame-caliber ones.
So here’s a review of the Blueshirts’ best efforts from low in the draft, which should give Larson, Roobroeck and Henricks hope that their NHL dreams aren’t blocked by when they were selected. We’ll limit our list to the fifth round and on, when teams are often taking fliers on players they think could have been overlooked as potential NHL contributors – or better.
1. Henrik Lundqvist, 7th Round, 2000
The obvious gold standard, King Henrik represents one of the great draft steals in any of the four major professional sports. Sixth all-time with 459 wins, 11th in save percentage (.918) and 17th in shutouts (64), the 2012 Vezina Trophy winner added 61 victories, 10 shutouts, a 2.30 goals-against average and a .921 save percentage in the playoffs and somehow never won a Stanley Cup despite going 6-2 with a 1.11 GAA and .961 save percentage in Game 7s.
The failure to capture a championship doesn’t really diminish Lundqvist’s legacy as one of the all-time greats; it only created regret amongst Rangers fans after he retired in 2021 due to heart inflammation, having been bought out by the Blueshirts before signing with the Washington Capitals but never playing for them. Lundqvist played in three Eastern Conference Finals and the 2014 Stanley Cup Final. Not bad for a player selected 205th overall.
A re-do of the 2000 draft almost certainly vaults him from the seventh round to No. 1 overall. Think about that.
2. Sergei Zubov, 5th Round, 1990
Sergei Zubov played only 165 regular-season games for the Rangers, but his consequential role in helping the Blueshirts end their 54-year championship drought in 1994, coupled with his eventual Hall of Fame induction in 2019, lands him second on this list. One of the all-time great value picks to come out of the former Soviet Union, Zubov lasted until the 85th selection, where then-Rangers general manager Neil Smith – who knew a thing or two about mining that value late in the draft in those days – scooped him up.
A dominant puck-moving defenseman and power-play ace, Zubov topped the Rangers with 89 points during the 1993-94 season and added 19 more in 22 playoff games as the Blueshirts captured the Cup. After one more season in New York, an all-time franchise bad trade sent him to the Pittsburgh Penguins for a season before he landed with the Dallas Stars for the final 12 years of his career. Zubov would win another Cup in 1999 and compiled 771 points in 1,068 games en route to enshrinement in Toronto.
3. Sergei Nemchinov, 12th Round, 1990
Chosen 159 spots after Zubov, Sergei Nemchinov was the second out-of-nowhere key contributor to a championship season from the 1990 draft – and arguably provided at least equivalent worth to Zubov, based strictly on where he was selected. Smith again reached into the emerging Russian talent pool and found a versatile forward in a round of the draft that no longer exists. Only eight players were picked after Nemchinov that year.
Related: Rangers’ Gamble on Russian Talent Was Critical to 1994 Cup
Nemchinov scored 75 goals with 86 assists and a plus-47 rating in his first three seasons in a Blueshirt, with 22 goals and 27 assists during the Cup-winning season. Quiet, no-nonsense and exhibiting the highly-disciplined approach of the vaunted Soviet state hockey system, Nemchinov’s outstanding two-way work made him the kind of essential support player needed to win championships – which he did again with the New Jersey Devils in 2000.
His integral role on the ’93-’94 team is fondly remember by Rangers fans of that generation, and he joined Zubov and teammates Alexei Kovalev and Alexander Karpovtsev in becoming the first Russians to have their names engraved on the Stanley Cup.
Nemchinov played nearly six seasons for the Rangers and 11 in the NHL. He appeared in three Stanley Cup Finals, reaching the championship round with the Devils again in 2001.
4. Darren Turcotte, 6th Round, 1986
The speedy center tends to be forgotten because his time in a Blueshirt ended agonizingly close to the Rangers’ run to the 1994 Stanley Cup, but Darren Turcotte still represents a significant late-round steal. Taken in the same draft as franchise icon Brian Leetch (ninth overall), GM Craig Patrick’s final draft with the Rangers also yielded Turcotte, who was born in Boston but grew up in North Bay, Ontario, with the 114th selection.
In the four seasons from 1989-93, Turcotte totaled 113 goals and 126 assists, reaching the 30-goal mark twice. While he didn’t lift the chalice with the 1994 Rangers, he nevertheless played a key role in it happening: Turcotte played 13 games for that team before Smith traded him and defenseman James Patrick to the Hartford Whalers in a deal that brought back forwards Steve Larmer and Nick Kypreos. Larmer had 21 goals and 39 assists in 68 regular-season games in a Blueshirt in ’93-’94, and added nine goals and seven assists in 23 games that postseason.
Kypreos, a tough winger who was part of that team’s beloved “Black Aces” group of depth players, skated in 46 games for the Rangers that season and had three goals and five assists with 102 penalty minutes. He drew into the lineup for Game 7 of the Cup Final when Joey Kocur was scratched due to injury.
Turcotte spent 12 years in the NHL with six teams, compiling 195 goals and 216 assists in 635 games.
5. Jesper Fast, 6th Round, 2010
There are numerous other worthy candidates to round out this list, but we’ll go with Jesper Fast, the beloved do-it-all forward chosen 157th overall. Exactly the type of find teams hope to come across late in the draft, Fast, now with the Carolina Hurricanes, remains a defensive stalwart who can play up and down the lineup, score (85 goals and 144 assists in 630 games) and kill penalties, and is the type of winning roster presence coaches dream about.
Chosen by the Rangers as the recipient of their Players’ Player Award five times, the Blueshirts have not been able to replace Fast’s work ethic, versatility and seemingly endless intangibles since he left after seven seasons in New York to sign with Carolina in 2020. He’s precisely the type of player the Rangers could desperately use in their bottom six, and his departure represents one of the most significant personnel regrets of recent years.
Honorable Mentions: Reijo Ruotsalainen, 6th Round, 1980; Tom Laidlaw, 6th Round, 1978; Carl Hagelin, 6th Round, 2007
Rangers Contributors, Not Overall Talent, Comprised Our List
We stuck to players drafted by the Rangers who made significant impacts with them, not ones who might have spent little time in Blueshirts before going elsewhere and finding lasting success. That excluded players like Tony Granato (sixth round, 1982), who recorded 43 goals and 45 assists in a season and a half on Broadway before being traded to the Los Angeles Kings. Ditto for Kjell Samuelsson (sixth round, 1984), Todd Marchant (seventh, 1993) and Kim Johnsson (11th, 1994), who ended up being the final player selected in his draft and went on to a strong 10-season, 739-game career as a puck-moving defenseman.
For all the franchise’s well-documented trouble with high draft picks, the Rangers have done well in discovering not just support players, but a few bonafide stars among the waning picks in the draft over the years. Whether it’s Larsson, Roobroeck or Henricks, or the club’s other lower selections over the past few years, team history suggests one or more of them have a chance to rise from their draft position to roles as NHL contributors, standout regulars – or even better.
