Can Rangers improve future by tanking season for higher draft pick?

With 25 games left in their season, the Rangers have conceded they’re most likely not going to make the playoffs, and they have started a “retool,’’ which has already seen them trade the team’s leading scorer, Artemi Panarin, and defenseman Carson Soucy. They’re likely to trade away more players away before the March 6 deadline.

But can they do more to help speed up the timeline on their renovation project? Would it help if they perhaps took the approach of tanking the rest of their season to try and ensure a higher draft pick?

Tanking is the hottest topic in the NBA these days, and things have gotten so bad the league fined the Utah Jazz $500,000 and the Indiana Pacers $100,000 this month for their “overt behavior… that prioritizes draft position over winning,’’ according to commissioner Adam Silver.

The NHL doesn’t believe it has an issue with tanking.

“Nobody tanks, because we have a weighted lottery,’’ NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in 2023, when four teams – Anaheim, Columbus, Chicago and San Jose – finished within two points of each other at the bottom of the standings with Connor Bedard the prize for the team that landed the No. 1 pick in the draft. “You’re not going to lose games to increase your odds by a couple of percentage points. That’s silly.’’

The last three years have seen three special players be taken with the first overall pick. First there was Bedard, who went to Chicago in 2023 (Chicago had the third-worst record), then Macklin Celebrini, who went to San Jose (which was last overall) in 2024, and defenseman Matthew Schaefer, who went to the Islanders last year after they jumped from the 10th spot to win the No. 1 pick in the lottery. They became the longest shot to win the No. 1 pick since the lottery began in 1995.

“The hockey gods smiled on us,’’ said Islanders great Ken Morrow, who represented the team at the nationally televised lottery.

The Rangers were in the 11th spot, one behind the Islanders, at last year’s lottery, with a 3.0% chance to win the top pick. Things might have been different for them had they won the right to take Schaefer.

The won the draft lottery twice, in back-to-back years, 2019 and 2020. In 2019 they moved up from sixth to second overall, and the next year they won the eight-team second phase of the weird, COVID-19 bubble draft to land the No. 1 pick overall.

The next year, in 2021, the NHL made some changes to the lottery, reducing the number of drawings from three (to determine first, second, and third overall) to two (just first and second); limiting teams to moving up no more than 10 places in the draft order, and ruling that teams can move up in the lottery no more than twice in a five-year period.

Currently, the Rangers (22-29-6, 50 points) sit third in the draft order, and have an 11.6% chance of winning the No. 1 selection, according to Tankathon.com. The Vancouver Canucks (18-33-6, 42 points) have the worst record in the league, and have an 18.5% chance of winning the lottery, while St. Louis (20-28-9, 49) is second worst, with a 13.6% chance of winning. Calgary (23-27-6, 52) and Winnipeg (22-26-8, 52) round out the bottom five, and have a 9.5% and 8.5% chance, respectively, of winning the lottery.

When the season resumes Thursday, the Rangers should have defenseman Adam Fox back from a lower-body injury and they may have goaltender Igor Shesterkin back, as well. Both have been practicing since the team returned from their Olympic break last week, and getting them back will strengthen the team and increase their chances of winning.

So the odds are probably better that the Rangers will see their chances at getting the top pick go down, rather than up, the rest of the season.

By most accounts, though, this year’s draft doesn’t feature a transformational player such as Bedard, Celebrini or Schaefer. Instead, most observers believe there are three or four players who could be potential stars. Penn State forward Gavin McKenna, Swedish forward Ivar Stenberg, and defensemen Keaton Verhoeff of North Dakota and Chase Reid of the Soo Greyhounds of the Ontario Hockey League are the biggest names at the top of the draft.

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.