A basketball term acutely describes what the New York Rangers need in a first-round draft selection. Following a window of high-end recruiting in a quasi-rebuild, it is imperative that the club show a desire for the "one-possession ballplayer."
There is always something to learn beyond the confines of a single domain, and basketball provides the perfect term for the essential talent the Rangers should be seeking at the entry-level draft.
Roland Lazenby’s “Michael Jordan: The Life” is a nearly 700-page mass-published biography that dives far deeper into Air Jordan's life and career than the groundbreaking “The Last Dance” ESPN series of the same subject matter.
Lazenby pens a chapter where the young MJ is nervous heading into his first “Five-Star” high school and college elite recruiting camp in Pittsburgh. It was created by Howard Garfinkel who would go on to display players for 50 years, including Lebron James and Kevin Durant.
The Carolina coaches were not yet sold on Jordan, and he became a last-minute addition to the camp roster. For context, the Five-Star camp wasn’t for sleepers, “The conventional wisdom was that the best young players had already been identified.”
To be crystal clear, “His Airness” was not the best high school recruit. Far from it. He wasn’t the best college recruit either. The connection between the New York Rangers and The Five Star Camp is a simple term, “Over the decades of Garfinkel’s Five-Star, there had come into being a phrase for the very best of the best, the sort of extremely rare talent that just leaps out to observers. It was called the ‘one-possession player’,’ Garfinkel explained, ‘A one-possession player means all you have to do is see them once.”
In a camp of thousands of players, 150 head coaches taking notes and networking, players had to catch the eye of scouts who were already quite busy.
Garfinkel would go on to observe the first night of camp through his office window, noticed Jordan drain a jumper over 3 defenders, and labeled him the number one shooting guard at the camp.
Famous scout Tom Konchalski told Brendan Malone, an assistant from Syracuse who had the honors of coaching at the prestigious camp in the summer of 1980. All was right until Kochalski informed Malone about his shooting guard, “He said ‘You got Aubrey Sherrod?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And he said, ‘What do you mean’. Aubrey Sherrod was considered the number one shooting guard in the rising senior class at the time. I said, ‘I took a kid from North Carolina.”
The New York Rangers rebuild began with “The Letter” sent to the club’s season ticket holders in 2018. In the time spanning from the letter release to the present, these are the team's first-round draft selections and pre-draft scouting reports:
Two of the listed players were hailed as capable NHL weapons, and the others brought forth a myriad of questions from the jump. It goes without saying the organization has struggled with the development of its highest draft selections.
The Athletic recently released its ranking of under 23 skaters, and one glaring issue dominated the Rangers youngsters; skating. For a more in-depth read on this group's struggles, READ HERE.
In the Ranger's history, this is likely the best six-year run at the draft ever. That doesn’t say much for a club that buys to win. Not a single scouting report screams star player at first glance.
Here are examples of players who were drafted within the same time frame:
Then again, observe from the wider scope. No prospect is perfect, no player is perfect, and that's the beauty of the game. But, these reports often suggest flaws that are directly related to the development challenges these players are still facing today.
The game of hockey is all about skating. Skating coach Robby Glantz continues to train NHL superstars and Pewee-level kids alike because of the necessity of leg strength and technique.
A player could have great instincts, hands, and a lethal shot, but it has become obvious that the strengths of these players can only be maximized if their weaknesses improve.
As for the two selections taken by the current regime, Brennan Othmann and Gabe Perreault also have vices that may hinder their ceiling. The Rangers could use a healthy what-you-see-is-what-you-get prospective asset.
Most of the selections above, even at the time of their drafting, presented question marks when other steadily developing young guns were available for taking.
The draft is a gamble, but it is becoming hard to believe that a handful of the post-rebuild first-rounders haven’t just underperformed, but crashed and burned before leaving the organization entirely.
Will 2024 be the first year the club lands a prospect with limited flaws in their skill set? A one-possession ball player may ease the fanbase’s frustrations in the quasi-rebuild and contention era taking place in the Big Apple.
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