A disappointing New York Rangers prospect season came to a sad ending on Friday night as the last remaining prospect saw his team eliminated. Raoul Boilard and his Baie-Comeau Drakkar dropped a 5-4 decision to the Moncton Wildcats in game five and lost the series 4-1.
Boilard was scoreless as his team dug themselves a 4-0 hole over the first two periods and staged a four goal third period rally that tied the game. But the tie was short-lived as Moncton would score the series winning goal just 19 seconds after the Drakkar had tied things up.
The Rangers 2024 fourth round selection would finish the playoffs with a 4-5-9 stat line and add that to his 12-34-46 regular season gave him the 2024-2025 prospect scoring title with an overall 16-39-55 stat line for the season.
But much like the Rangers’ own season, this season was a disappointment for the 12 Rangers prospects to play this year in North America. Only one prospect saw improvement in his production and that is unacceptable.
Even Gabe Perreault saw his production decline as he finished with 12 fewer points this season than he did last season. And from a prospect standpoint things are not looking promising for next season.
There will only be eight returning prospects for next season (if Rasmus Larsson does not find a NCAA team to play for then the number drops to just six). If the 2025 NHL Entry draft were held today the Rangers would eight picks depending on whoever the team general manager decides what to do about which first round pick to give the Pittsburgh Penguins 2025 or 2026.
If the Rangers do keep their pick, then the number rises to nine which would make it 17 prospects in the pipeline. Not since the end of the Neil Smith days have the Rangers had so few the number of prospects in the pipeline.
The future does not look all that bright for the Rangers, the decision not to allow the rebuilding to run its course is going to come back to haunt the Rangers. So will the decision by Chris Drury to waste six draft picks in trades that left the Rangers just JT Miller to show for them.
What is even sadder is that as much as Rangers fans hated Glen Sather, with Slats gone there is nobody in the Rangers front office who will tell James Dolan what kind of disaster Chris Drury is.
As for Me
This will be the last Prospect Park for a while as I have lost so much money trying to keep this place afloat. Toss in that the Rangers have made it totally impossible to talk to the draft picks but telling the teams of the drafted players to send interview requests to the Rangers.
And for the last two years, the Rangers have not granted access to those prospects. Yet another foolish decision as prospect writers like me help introduce the prospects to you the Rangers fan.
Over the twenty plus years of covering New York Rangers prospects between Prospect Park and the Blueshirt Bulletin I have directly interviewed 135 Ranger prospects. I have done evaluations on every draft pick going back to the 2001 draft which is close to 160.
But this takes money and sad to say it has become harder and harder to make money here. And being a one-man team is just impossible to do with the Rangers not drafting players from the WHL or BCHL.
And to be honest I want to put my money towards earning my bachelor’s degree in journalism (technically Media Innovations).
However, you are not getting rid of me that easily as the saying goes “When one door closes, another opens” so I am joining up with some exceptionally talented writers who are about to launch an exciting new hockey website.
The place is called Hockey Hot Stove, and it is going to offer more than I ever dreamed of doing here. Instead of just covering the Rangers prospects I am going to cover all the prospects. I will still do some Rangers work, but I am excited about this place.
If you don’t already follow me at Bluesky please do https://bsky.app/profile/theprospectpark.bsky.social
and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ProspectParkNYR
Thanks for the support over the years and I hope to see you soon
