NHL Draft Lottery: Rangers get 5th pick after falling two spots
Rangers coach Mike Sullivan, right, and GM Chris Drury left, speak to the media at Rangers training camp in Tarrytown on Sep. 17, 2025. Credit: Ed Quinn
With one last ping pong ball to go at the NHL’s draft lottery Tuesday night, things were looking good for the Rangers.
But that last ball instead made the Toronto Maple Leafs the big winners , and owners of the No. 1 pick in the NHL’s June draft. And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the Rangers also missed out on the No. 2 pick overall when the San Jose Sharks won the drawing for the No. 2 pick for the second straight year.
So, instead of moving up from the third position in the draft order, where they started the night, the Rangers slipped down two spots. They will pick 5th at the draft, which will be June 26-27 in Buffalo. Vancouver, which finished last overall in the regular season and entered Tuesday No. 1 in the draft order, slipped to No. 3, and Chicago, which had been second in the draft order entering Tuesday, slipped to No. 4.
The Islanders were also in the lottery, but at No. 13 in the draft order, had no chance to win the No. 1 pick overall. Their position did not move, and they will select 13th at the draft.
The Rangers, who finished 34-39-9 in the regular season, were tied with the Calgary Flames for the third-fewest points (77) in the league. They entered the lottery third in the draft order because Calgary had more regulation wins, and thus “won’’ the tiebreaker to finish ahead of the Rangers in the standings. The difference meant an 11.5% chance for the Rangers to win, while Calgary had a 9.5% chance.
With the format of the draft, which was televised on ESPN, 14 numbered ping pong balls are entered into a mixer and four are selected, with each team in the lottery having a certain number of randomly assigned combinations. As each ball came up, the odds for each team were recalculated, and in the drawing for the No. 1 pick, the Rangers’ odds of winning went up with each ball, to 11.8% after the first ball, 13.9% after the second, and 18.2% after the third. In the second drawing, their odds went down to 10.5% after the first ball, then back up to 13.6% after the second, and again to 18.2% after the third.
Toronto, which began the night fifth in the draft order, was in danger of losing their first round pick if they had fallen out of the top 5, as a result of a trade with Boston for defenseman Brandon Carlo last year. San Jose, which was ninth in the order, now will have had the first pick overall in 2024, then the No. 2 pick in 2025 and 2026.
The consensus on this year’s top prospects is that the top 2 – Penn State winger Gavin McKenna and Swedish winger Ivar Stenberg – are a clear cut above the rest. McKenna is rated No. 1 in the NHL’s final North American rankings for skaters (non-goalies), while Stenberg is the NHL’s top-rated European skater.
After those two, it’s widely believed the next five best prospects are defensemen. Chase Reid, a 6-2 ½ 195-pounder with Sault Ste. Marie of the OHL, is the NHL’s No. 2 rated North American skater and Alberts Smits, a 6-3, 205 Latvian who plays in the German league, is the NHL’s No. 2 European skater. Carson Carels, a 6-2, 198-pounder from Prince George of the WHL, Keaton Verhoeff, a 6-3 ½ 208-pounder at the University of North Dakota, and 6-2 ½ , 206-pounder Daxon Rudolph of Prince Albert of the WHL round out the group.
The most highly regarded forward after that group is Caleb Malhotra, a 6-2, 182-pound center out of Brantford, of the OHL, and the son of former Ranger Manny Malhotra. He’s rated No. 6 among North American skaters on the NHL’s rankings.
The Rangers moved up in the lottery in consecutive years in 2019 and 2020, getting the second overall pick in 2019 – which they used to select Kaapo Kakko – and the No. 1 pick overall in 2020, which they used to select Alexis Lafreniere.
