DALLAS — The Rangers have been aggressive throughout this rebuilding process, and that didn’t stop at the beginning of the draft Friday night.
Instead, the Blueshirts went a bit outside conventional thinking when they took 18-year-old Russian winger Vitali Kravtsov with the No. 9-overall pick. With a handful of higher-rated prospects still available — the likes of Oliver Wahlstrom and Noah Dobson, who both went to the Islanders with picks No. 11 and 12, and Evan Bouchard — the Rangers just went ahead and picked who they wanted.
It turns out their list was quite different than most of the consensus predictions.
“He’s such a high-end hockey player,” said director of player personnel Gordie Clark. “We had him as our second-best forward in the draft. Everybody was on board.”
Kravtsov played 35 games this past season for in the KHL for Traktor Chelyabinsk, putting up four goals and seven points, winning the Alexei Cherepanov Award as the league’s Rookie of the Year. The 6-foot-3, 185-pound left-hand-shooting right winger added six goals and 11 points in 16 playoff games, the most postseason points in league history for a player under 20 years old.
“Happy, extremely happy,” Kravtsov said through his interpreter and agent, Paul Theofanous. As for his breakout performance in the postseason, Kravtsov said “the coach full started to trust [me] and play [me] a lot.”
Kravtsov has one more year left on his contract in the KHL, but it is possible he could get out of it if he and the team determine he would be best suited in North America. That’s the same situation the Rangers had with a first-round pick from last year, No. 21 Filip Chytil, who spent most of the year with AHL Hartford, but did get nine games in the NHL.
Clark remembered going to watch Kravtsov in the playoffs and just being floored with how good he was, comparing him to Capitals star winger Evgeny Kuznetsov.
“What he did in the playoffs didn’t surprise us at all,” Clark said. “His skill level — his hands and his head — are through the roof. He’s a very, very intellectual kid, and he’s a great kid. You know what, good people find a way to be successful.”
From there, the Rangers were set to have picks No. 26 (from Boston in the Rick Nash trade) and No. 28 (from Tampa Bay in the Ryan McDonagh-J.T. Miller trade). But they didn’t stand pat, instead offering up No. 26 and No. 48 in the second round to the Senators so they could move up to No. 22.
There, they selected 18-year-old American defenseman K’Andre Miller. Having switched from forward to defense just two years ago, Miller is a left-handed shot from Minnesota who just started his freshman year at Wisconsin after two seasons in the U.S. Developmental program.
“It means the world to have a team really want you that bad that they trade for you, it means everything,” Miller said. “For them to have that opportunity for me, it’s pretty cool.”
Miller is African-American and was raised by a single mother in Minnesota, and he already started talking about wanting to give back to the community. That type of character was also something that stood out to Clark, in addition to his on-ice talents.
“He reminds me a lot of Brady Skjei, with his mobility,” Clark said. “He’s an elite athlete, a wide receiver, played baseball. So he’s in that vein of a great athlete. His mobility is outstanding, his passing is good.”
The Rangers used their final first-round pick, No. 28, on Swedish defenseman Nils Lundkvist. The 17-year-old played in part of last season in the top Swedish league, and Clark was impressed with how, at 5-foot-11 and 175 pounds, he diced up the defense.
“They dropped the puck, and he just took it and went through the whole team,” Clark said. “I was awake and excited about where I was.”
The same can be said for the Rangers as a whole, who are rolling right along with this aggressive rebuild.