2026 NHL Draft Lottery Results Leave Long Road For Rangers' Retool

The New York Rangers will not find an escape hatch out of their perilous situation at fifth overall in the 2026 NHL draft.

Frankly, no team comes out of the draft lottery with its problems solved on the spot—not even the big winners at the very top of the order in Toronto and San Jose.

Gavin McKenna and Ivar Stenberg, widely projected to go first and second overall, respectively, should be dynamite NHLers and could grow into true stars. But right now they profile more as future co‑headliners or ideal running mates for Auston Matthews and Macklin Celebrini than as instant, standalone saviors.

Will there be great players drafted from the third pick and onward? Absolutely. There is plenty of talent in this draft and, inevitably, a few will become top NHL players. Possibly even better than McKenna.

No, this is not like 2015, when Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel were on the line. Nor is it 2009 with John Tavares and Victor Hedman. Even if the balls had pinged and ponged to their fortune, the Rangers were not being gifted a solution that erases their current dilemma.

What the Rangers do lose out on is certainty. You can plug McKenna in as a top-of-the-lineup player in a few seasons. The same is true with Stenberg.

There are other players with that upside who will be available at fifth overall, but the first task ahead of the Rangers is identifying exactly whose projection is best.

Starting at third overall, I count six or seven players who could be ranked in almost any order. No matter how the board shakes out, the team will have a very difficult decision to make among a handful of qualified prospects.

To be fair, the Rangers do have a very capable head of their scouting department. John Lilley is very professional, but also understands the modern game and the nuances of blending data, video, and common sense.

A look at the Toronto Maple Leafs' drafts under his watch shows a high conversion rate, and he's also pulled out some quality players in the top two rounds during his four previous drafts with the Rangers.

The other problem this presents is that it will be a major test of what will hopefully be a complete rethinking of the team's developmental arm. There are pros and cons to drafting the various players available to the Rangers at fifth overall, but they all share a need for patience and hands-on guidance.

If it's defenseman Keaton Verhoeff, improvements to skating will be what determine whether he becomes a top-pairing defenseman or just another NHLer. The Rangers, notoriously, have struggled with these types of prospects.

If it's defenseman Chase Reid, the task will be hands-on coaching, likely at the AHL level, to help him make better decisions rather than relying on always skating his way into success.

GM Chris Drury recently fired the coaching staff for the Hartford Wolf Pack. Getting credible coaches in place will be paramount, as will the organization's giving that coaching staff the green light to run the club like a legitimate, competitive hockey team rather than as a breeding ground for management's pet projects. Too many defensemen with raw talent—Scott Morrow, Nils Lundkvist, K'Andre Miller among them—did not reach their full potential in New York.

What if Caleb Malhotra is there at fifth overall? The hockey brain is there, but he needs a lot of work with a good skills coach. That will be the difference between whether he's a first- or third-line center.

The point is that it's not only about who the Rangers select at fifth overall. It's about what happens next. This is not a deterministic exercise, and the same prospect who becomes a star in one environment may fail in another.

Yet even in the best of circumstances, the benefits will manifest years down the line.

Look at the history of the fifth overall pick, and you'll find some great players; Jake Sanderson, Cutter Gauthier, and Phil Kessel among them. Even those guys needed three or four seasons after being drafted before they became true impact NHLers.

Whoever the Rangers draft, they'll be fortunate if the player is a full-time NHLer by the 2027-2028 season, let alone one who is a true difference-maker.

That timeline isn't conducive to the team's professed desire for a "retool" rather than "rebuild." If there's a silver lining to the Rangers losing the lottery, to say nothing of dropping from third to fifth overall, it's exactly that.

The Pyrrhic victories of past lottery success with Alexis Lafrenière and Kaapo Kakko imperiled the first rebuild effort. Plugging in McKenna or Stenberg could have been used as a pretext for a prematurely declared victory in righting the ship.

Instead, the lottery result is a final confirmation that the Rangers will have no easy way out of the mess they have made for themselves.

No hero is coming to New York to bail the team out. Not as a free agent like Connor McDavid, and now we know it will not come in the form of a draft pick such as Gavin McKenna. The Rangers, instead, will have to build this up organically.