By Warren Kozireski — After selecting three players in the first round of the 2018 NHL Entry Draft in Dallas, the New York Rangers followed with seven more selections on day two highlighted by Swedish goaltender Olof Lindblom with the 39th overall selection early in the second round.
The Stockholm native played 20 games for Djurgarden this past season with a 3.10 goals against average and ,897 save percentage, but was stellar versus his own age group at the U-18 tournament.
Management went defense with their next three selections taking Jacob Ragnarsson and Joey Keane with the 70th and 88th pick respectively in the third round and Nico Gross in the fourth 101st overall.
Ragnarsson was born in California, but has played the last four years in the Almtuma system in Sweden, where he posted 13 points in 47 games as a responsible defensive defenseman.
Keane is more offensive with a 6’0” 185 lb. frame. The OHL product from Barrie netted 12 goals with 32 assists in 62 games.
And Gross came to North America from the Switzerland system and played 58 games with Oshawa in the OHL in 2017-18. He totaled 14 points and added four points in six U-18 World Juniors and did play for Team Switzerland at the U-20 World Juniors as one of the youngest players.
Finnish right wing Lauri Pajuniemi was their fifth round selection and the 6’0”, 183 lb. played against men with Liiga and scored seven points in 32 games, though he did play 14 games at the junior A level with SM-Liiga and fared better with ten points over 14 contests.
“Last year was pretty good to me because there were bigger guys so I had to hit harder and skate much more every day,” Pajuniemi said at the draft.
The Rangers added 6’3”, 190 lb. Swedish defenseman Simon Kjellberg in the seventh round along with Massachusetts high school product and Northeastern University bound Riley Hughes in the eighth.
“I feel great—yesterday (first round) was obviously a huge day for us with the three picks and really excited about what we were able to do and today was more about value and our lists and getting guys that had potential and that we were really high on and I think we were able to do that,” General Manager Jeff Gorton said at the conclusion of the draft.
“We had a goalie first overall of all the goalies in the draft by a longshot, so we thought with our history with goalies and we have an organization that is able to develop goalies, that it would be a good ick and we’ll see,” Gorton said about the Lindblom selection in the second round. “We like the player a lot and we felt like it was an opportunity that we couldn’t pass up at that time.
“I’m never going to sit up here and say we’re not excited because we just drafted ten players and we felt good about every one of them, but time will tell.”
