I have to remind myself not to read too much into grades immediately after the draft (or to do it myself). I remember stumbling on this winners/losers article from the 2004 Draft several years after the fact:
Wheatley: Winners and losers
Among the winners were Chicago for landing a cornerstone guy in Cam Barker. Along with Ovechkin, Washington got a "gem" in Jeff Schultz but they made no reference to Mike Green. Rangers were winners for getting Al Montoya and Lauri Korpikoski.
Among the losers were Boston and Detroit who didn't have first round picks. But they landed David Krejci and Johan Franzen later in that draft.
I was just thinking last night or maybe it was the night before, how many terrible, terrible first round picks the Rangers struck out on from the early 90's all the way up until the mid 2000's. And even a couple terrible ones after the mid 2000's. And some real misses on a few top 10 picks. So it's funny you mention Montoya and Korpikoski. Even going back to the late 80's they really bombed in the first round.
Just going from 87 onward.
1987: Jayson More - Meh.
1989: Steven Rice - Pretty crappy pick. Used in the Messier trade and only played 326 NHL games.
1990: Michael Stewart - BUST. Never played an NHL game, despite an 18 year playing career.
1991: Alexei Kovalev - Good.
1992: Peter Ferraro - BUST. Only 92 NHL games, despite a 15 year playing career.
1993: Niklas Sundstrom - Pretty decent career.
1994: Dan Cloutier - Terrible, terrible goaltender that managed to play parts of 10 seasons in the NHL.
1996: Jeff Brown - BUST. 0 NHL games played.
1997: Stefan Cherneski - Too injury prone and suffered career ending injury at 22.
1998: Manny Malhotra - Lengthy career, but one spent majority as a 4th liner. Disappointing for a 7th overall pick.
1999: Pavel Brendl - One of the most legendary busts of the late 90's. 4th overall pick. Used in the Lindros trade. Lengthy playing career, but only 92 games played in the NHL.
1999: Jamie Lundmark. BUST. 9th overall pick, insanely overrated prospect at the time. Parts of 7 seasons in the NHL as a journeyman. Two top nine picks that year, two very big busts.
2001: Dan Blackburn - Career ended prematurely due to injury, was forced to play in the NHL at 18 years old. I'd probably give this one a mulligan.
2003: Hugh Jessiman - BUST. Biggest one that year. LOL. Enough said.
2004: Al Montoya - One of the better American goalie prospects at the time, Rangers goalie of the future, but was just a career backup and never played a regular season game for the Rangers.
2004: Lauri Korpikoski - Underwhelming career, but a better one than a lot of these guys.
2005: Marc Staal - Isn't good anymore, was always overrated, but a decent sized career at least.
2006: Bobby Sanguinetti - Another worthless BUST that played only 45 career NHL games.
2007: Alexei Cherepanov - Tragically died at 19 years old, they get a mulligan for this one.
2008: Michael Del Zotto - Pretty okay career.
2009: Chris Kreider - He's their best first round pick since Kovalev from 18 years earlier.
2010: Dylan McIlrath - BUST.
2011: JT Miller - Looking good so far.
2012: Brady Skjei - Looking good so far.
No first round picks between 2013 and 2016. Rest of the first round picks still to be determined.
Really wanted to post this. That's some pretty lousy drafting in the first round over a 2.5 decade span.