Throughout their long, unremarkable drafting history, the New York Rangers, as has been well documented by their frustrated and exasperated fan base, have whiffed on first round picks more often than Steve Balboni in the batter’s box at Yankee Stadium. If you’re a long-suffering Blueshirt enthusiast, you’re quite familiar with all of the names that make Rangerstown do one, big collective face-palm.
Hugh Jessiman. Pavel Brendl. Bobby Sanguinetti. Michael Stewart. Al Montoya. Jeff Brown. OK, I’ll stop, I’ll stop.
Instead of rehashing all of the mind numbingly horrific draft day blunders that the Rangers have become synonymous with spanning several decades and numerous regimes, let’s focus on the first round picks that actually panned out.