Synergy27 said:
I disagree. The 1994 team was OLD, and I'm having trouble remembering specific names but the prospect cupboard behind Amonte was completely bare in my recollection.
The top prospect at the time was Niklas Sundstrom, who was pimped as the next Jari Kurri. He wasn't, just another third liner.
We also were told that twins Peter and Chris Ferraro will be great NHLers. There was also great hope for Barry Richter (no relation) and Joby Messier (first cousin). Lee Sorochan and Max Galanov were two more great defensive prospects. Corey Hisch was Richter's heir apparent, but then was given away for Nathan LaFayette when it became clear he too will bust.
That's 7 prospects that anyone even cared about at the time, all the remaining ones were known to be crap. Of these, only Sundstram had a career, and an unspectacular one at that.
We then drafted Cloutier. Neil Smith loved him. He had a trade of our last overall first rounder for a pair of second rounders until he realized Cloutier was available, and he cancelled the trade. (He talked about it himself on WFAN.) In 1995 we dealt away our first rounder for Pat Verbeek. In the second round we drafted Dube, who probably would've had a great career at any era other than the intra-lockout clutch-and-grab period. He dominated the QMJHL, but couldn't stick with the Rangers. He then decided to go to Switzerland (where he went to high school) for one year. He's been playing there to this day.
In 1996 we drafted Jeff Brown in the first round, whom Neil Smith declared a sure-fire top-4 NHL defenseman. He became a UHLer. Smith also declared in 1997 that the Rangers got a pair of first round talents in Wes Jarvis and Burke Henry. Both spectacular busts. We drafted a really good kid in Stefan Cherneski who had a knack for scoring (and was named the top student in Western Canada). He was the last one to be cut and was supposed to come back very quickly, but his knee got shattered into dozens of little pieces while he was on his AHL stint.
So we had very few prospects before 1994 and followed that up with terrible drafting, combined with trading away youth like Norstrom, Zubov and Nedved.
