To Pick or Not to Pick: That is the Question as Rangers Fall to 12th Overall Pick
"Map out your future—but do it in pencil." -- Jon Bon Jovi
By now you all know the deal.
When the Rangers acquired J.T. Miller, part of the return was a conditional first round pick in this year’s draft. The conditions surrounding the pick? If the pick fell between 14 and 32 it would automatically transfer to the Vancouver Canucks. Anything between one and 13 and the Rangers could opt to send the pick to Vancouver or keep it for themselves. If they chose the latter, the Canucks would receive New York’s 2026 unprotected first round pick.
Less than a week later, Vancouver complicated life for Drury and Co. by flipping that pick to Metropolitan Division rival Pittsburgh in the Marcus Pettersson trade, as Jim Rutherford and Patrik Allvin continued their mission to assemble a team full of Petterssons.
So here we are in a post-lottery world where we know that the pick currently assigned to the Rangers is number 12 overall, and the question is: What should New York do?
Before we get to that, though, congratulations to the NHL and ESPN for partnering to take a fairly straightforward lottery and complicate it to the point that no one really understood what the hell was going on, and managing to make it as exciting as watching beige paint dry. NHL hockey is probably one of the most exciting things on television on any given night, yet somehow they continuously insist on making themselves look as stupid and boring as possible in all aspects of their marketing.
