Editor’s note: For the second consecutive year, The Athletic’s Vincent Z. Mercogliano and Peter Baugh are doing a series ranking the New York Rangers’ top 10 prospects. The order is based on detailed analysis of the organizational pipeline, along with conversations with evaluators, coaches and many of the players. The aim is to balance where each prospect is on his development path while weighing projected upside over time.Only prospects who maintain rookie eligibility and have yet to reach their second contract are included, bumping previously ranked players such as Noah Laba, Scott Morrow and last year’s No. 1 Gabe Perreault out of consideration.Each of the top 10 will be profiled in a series of stories that began Monday and concludes Sept. 4.No. 10: Adam Sýkora, LWNo. 9: Drew Fortescue, LDNo. 8: Tomáš Chrenko, CNo. 7: Ben MacBeath, LDFollowing a loss early in the 2025-26 OHL season, Flint Firebirds coach Paul Flache entered an empty locker room. After momentarily wondering where his players went, he heard weights clinking and clanking from a nearby workout room.“I went in there, and it was (Nathan Aspinall) who was leading the charge with the entire team,” Flache recently told The Athletic. “I called my GM (Dave McParlan) after and I said, ‘We’re going to be just fine this year.'”Flache’s intuition proved correct.The Firebirds went 44-17-4-3 — the highest win total in the junior-league franchise’s 10-year history — and swept the Owen Sound Attack in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs. They were led by Aspinall, their captain and top scorer, who exploded in 2025-26, catapulting himself from an unranked New York Rangers prospect to No. 6 on our list.The New York Rangers are in limboVincent Z. Mercogliano and moreThe 6-foot-7, left-shot winger finished second in the OHL with 94 points (33 goals and 41 assists) in 65 games, exactly doubling his total from the prior season, then added 17 more (10 goals and seven assists) in eight playoff games. Flint was swept in the second round by the Windsor Spitfires, despite Aspinall netting four goals in the series.“Our main focus was shutting him down as best as we could,” Windsor coach Greg Walters said. “He’s an extremely big, talented kid, with real good offensive instincts and soft hands.”Aspinall saw it as the culmination of his underdog journey, with all the pieces falling into place for his final OHL season.