Alberts Smits just cracked an elite tier in The Athletic's new Rangers prospect rankings.
Scott Wheeler's annual Prospect Tiers put the 18-year-old Latvian defenseman in Tier 3, the "All-Star" category.
Wheeler defines that tier as a top-60 player, someone who wouldn't be a contender's best player but would matter to a real championship core.
Only four players made Tier 1 and four made Tier 2. Everyone else, including Smits, sits below the true elite class.
He's one of three Rangers prospects to make the list, immediately becoming the organization's top-ranked name in the pipeline.
All five defensemen taken in the first round of June's draft debuted in Tier 3B, and Smits ranked second among that group.
Only Chase Reid, picked two spots later by the Seattle Kraken, ranked ahead of him among that first-round defenseman class.
Why New York wasted no time betting on Smits
Rangers head of amateur scouting John Lilley made clear after the draft that Smits was the pick all along, regardless of who else was on the board.
"Alberts, to us, was the top player out of that grouping," Lilley said. "Very excited to get him into our pipeline."
New York didn't wait around either, signing him to an entry-level contract almost immediately after the draft.
Wheeler called Smits one of the safest prospects in this class, while noting he has more talent, and more to work on, than people realize.
That assessment lines up with what Smits actually did last season. He put up 13 points in 38 games for Jukurit in Finland's Liiga.
He also played five playoff games with EHC Munchen in Germany's DEL, real professional minutes against grown men at 18 years old.
Add in appearances for Latvia at the Milan-Cortina Olympics and the 2026 World Championship, and the résumé looks unusually mature for his age.
At 6-foot-3 and 209 pounds, Smits already has legitimate NHL size, which only speeds up expectations around his development timeline.
He'll likely open the season with Hartford in the AHL, but an NHL debut sometime during 2026-27 wouldn't surprise anyone in the organization.
For a Rangers blue line still searching for its next franchise piece, a Tier 3 ranking this early is exactly the kind of signal worth watching.
Will Alberts Smits make his NHL debut with the Rangers sometime this season?
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