What You've All Been Waiting For: Gordie Clark's Take on J.T. Miller

As usual, the Ranger fan base is a bit uneasy following the pick of forward J.T. Miller at 15. Normally, though, after hearing the reasoning behind the pick from Director of Player Personnel Gordie Clark, the uneasiness begins to fade and the fans feel somewhat better about the newest addition to the organization. 

Courtesy of Steve Zipay at Newsday, here's what Clark had to say about J.T. Miller...

"...there was no one (on the board) that had all the qualities that JT had. There could be someone who will score more goals, there could be somebody that's going to be a faster skater, but if you want to put size with skating with character with grit with work ethic with playmaking ability and scoring ability, no one had all those qualities in their game. He had them all."

Clark also went on to compare Miller to Brandon Dubinsky and Mike Richards, saying that he puts forth a complete effort on every shift...

"he's like a Dubi (Brandon Dubinsky), Mike Richards. Every shift he expends everything he's got...He started coming up in a lot of the rankings from April because he was really one of the best players in the tournament in April. ...He validated what we had seen all year."

I'll have much more analysis and reports on Miller as well as a transcript of his meeting with the media over the next few hours (I'm not counting on getting very much sleep tonight).

Comments

[Charlie]

Well, we'll just have to put our trust in him and wait and see. It was still a shock though, especially with McNeill and Biggs available.

[Joshua]

Should've gotten a later pick and picked him. Like make a deal for oilers 19 and a 3 for this one and pick him later

[Nick Montemagno]

In response to both of you, I was also surprised that they did not trade down if they were not going to pick Biggs, McNeill or Armia. Miller was expected to go in the 20s so I'm sure he still would have fell to them. Unless he was on someone else's radar.

[JohnP]

As a very passionate Rangers fan as we all are, it is very frustrating to watch this team struggle to score goals. We look forward to the draft hoping against hope that we finally get a scorer after years of drafting d-men and what seesm to be at least so far a lack of goal scorers. So when yiou you see goal scorers on the board and we pass them up it's really frustrating and quite frankly it pissed me off. But it's a sunny morning now so I'll wait to see what happens, but I'm still not happy about the pick.
Did anyone expect Gordie to say anything less? I mean it is his job on the line so what's he going to say that the kid has the potential to be a third line checker?

[Nick Montemagno]

Hey, Grimaldi is still on the board and rumor has it that the Rangers would like to move up.

[JohnP]

Nick, I sure as hell hope so!

[matt]

what are they going to move up with? they dont have a second rounder...

[Nick Montemagno]

That's the point. They would move up to the second round.