BUFFALO, N.Y. — The New York Rangers didn’t solve all of their problems Friday night. But it was a pretty good start.One of the biggest criticisms levied against Chris Drury — often on this very site — is that the team president and general manager has allowed the Rangers’ pool of young talent to evaporate.From the time he took over atop the front office in the spring of 2021, through the 2024 trade deadline, he shipped away a total of 20 draft picks in pursuit of short-term gains. Many of them were rentals who were only here for a few months, and none of them got New York over the elusive championship hump.Among the dwindling group of prospects who arrived during that short-lived contention era, very few panned out. Not all of the blame falls on Drury, who inherited a stable that turned out to have some critical draft misses, but a heap of it is pointed at a development staff that he’s overseen and failed to maximize the fruits of a late-2010s rebuild.Rangers take Albert Smits, one of the most complete players in the draftThe Athletic Hockey ShowAs those players fizzled, several were discarded for lackluster returns. And without young, cornerstone pieces to fortify a veteran core that had plateaued, New York fell into a state of dysfunction — and losing.Back-to-back seasons without the playoffs turned the pressure up on Drury to fix the mess he created, stoking fears he might overextend for veteran Band-Aids at a time when the Rangers needed to be replenishing assets. But in a matter of minutes, he added two building blocks to a roster that so desperately needs them: first by acquiring high-scoring winger Pavel Dorofeyev in a stunning trade with the Vegas Golden Knights, then by selecting a well-rounded defenseman with top-pairing upside in Alberts Šmits with the No. 5 pick in the 2026 NHL Draft.I had a feeling that Šmits would be the pick, and while the debate will rage about whether New York would have been better off taking Chase Reid or Carson Carels, I talked to enough people who had Šmits right in the mix as one of the high-end defenseman in this class and deserving of consideration in this slot. Time will tell, but this much is clear: Drury and director of amateur scouting John Lilley can ill-afford to get this one wrong.We should find out what kind of player Šmits is rather quickly. The 6-foot-3 Latvian is expected to sign his entry-level contract this summer and put his NHL-ready game to the test in the 2026-27 season.