Don’t look now but Nathan Aspinall just might be the crown jewel of the 2024 Draft class for the New York Rangers.
The 6-foot-6 forward’s stock is way up after a breakout season in major junior, so much so that he’s one of the biggest risers in The Athletic’s recent 2024 re-draft.
The Rangers selected Aspinall in the fifth round (No. 159 overall) of the 2024 draft. He placed 34th overall in the re-draft overseen this past week by Corey Pronman. That’s a whopping jump of 125 spots, and moved Aspinall up to be an early second-round pick.
Only three players made a greater leap in the re-draft than Aspinall.
That’s due in large part to the 20-year-old’s dominating play last season. Aspinall, Flint’s captain, finished second in the OHL with 94 points (33 goals, 61 assists) in 65 games. By way of contrast, he’d never scored more than 18 goals (2023-24) nor recorded more than 47 points (2024-25) in his previous three OHL seasons.
“I’d love to see him go to Hartford (of the American Hockey League), probably start in a middle-six role and then kind of see where he can from there,” FloHockey’s Chris Peters told Forever Blueshirts on the Rink Rap podcast back in June. “I don’t know necessarily he’s going to be a 60-point scorer at the NHL level, even though he had this tremendous season, but I think there’s a lot more to him than we saw before. And I think that’s got to be a player you’re way more excited about being able to continue to develop because that’s a big guy, with skill, with a scoring ability.
“Really impressed with where he’s at. That’s like found money at this point.”
The Rangers saw something in the hard-working and skilled forward when they inked him to an amateur tryout agreement (ATO) so that he could play five games for AHL Hartford at the end of the 2024-25 campaign. But last season’s breakout and his emergence as a serious NHL prospect came as a pleasant surprise.
We listed Aspinall No. 8 in our 2026 ranking of Top-10 Rangers prospects, and he’s a big favorite of The Prospect Park’s Jess Rubenstein, who contributes here frequently.
“He drove play, not rode shotgun. He outperformed higher‑profile prospects. He outgrew his draft slot,” Rubenstein noted recently. “And he did it while adding skill and pace — the exact things the Rangers desperately need.”
Not all great news for Rangers in 2024 re-draft
Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY SportsCredit: USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Connect
The Rangers had only four selections in the 2024 NHL Draft, and defenseman EJ Emery was the only one picked in the first three rounds. Expected to be their best prospect out of this draft class after the Rangers selected him in the first round (No. 30 overall), Emery dropped 33 spots to No. 63 in the re-draft conducted by The Athletic.
That slots him 29 spots behind Aspinall, per Pronman. We listed the University of North Dakota junior No. 6 in our top-10 rankings.
As big a season as 2026-27 is for Aspinall, it may even be more important for Emery, who desperately needs to shed his underachieving tag and reclaim a top spot among Blueshirts prospects.
Center Cole Beaudoin and forward Liam Greentree, each acquired this past year by the Rangers in separate trades, are also members of the 2024 NHL draft class, each selected in the first round. The Utah Mammoth used the 24th overall pick to land Beaudoin; and in the re-draft he dropped one spot to No. 25. The Los Angeles Kings selected Greentree No. 26 overall, and he fell five spots to No. 31 in the re-draft.
Jim Cerny is Executive Editor at Forever Blueshirts and Managing Editor at Sportsnaut, with more than 30 years of … More about Jim Cerny
