Does a healthy Brett Berard have inside track to opening-night roster spot with Rangers?
Much of the attention when the New York Rangers open rookie camp on Wednesday will be focused on whether forward Gabe Perreault, their top prospect, is ready to grab an NHL job. Though the 20-year-old was scoreless in five games with New York in April after signing with the Blueshirts, he didn’t look out of place.
But the son of former NHL center Yanic Perreault isn’t the only young player with some NHL experience who’ll be at camp looking to earn a full-time gig with the Rangers. Forwards Brett Berard and Brennan Othmann, who’ve spent time with the Blueshirts, also want to be on Broadway in October.
Hockey prospects reporter Russ Cohen of Sportsology told Forever Blueshirts on the RINK RAP podcast this week that it’s likely at most two of the three will be on the opening-night roster – and cited Berard as perhaps the most likely to make the team under new coach Mike Sullivan.
“I think Berard will make it, because he has other things that he can do,” Cohen explained, adding that his speed, versatility and well-rounded game should play well at the NHL level.
“He does forecheck. He does play hard,” Cohen said. “He is fast and he will occasionally score. But he’s a ‘guts’ kind of guy, and he’s one of those guys that is a definite plus for a team because he’s a sparkplug. For a month and a half when the Rangers really sagged last year, he was good. He was that sparkplug that when he was in there, he would do that.
“And I think he would still do that now, starting from scratch – with a new coach, starting a season.”
Healthy Brett Berard could have inside track for Rangers roster spot
That’s especially true now that Berard is healthy. The 23-year-old revealed in late July that he tore the labrum in his shoulder during his fourth NHL game last season; the injury lingered throughout the remainder of 2024-25 and forced him to withdraw from Team USA at the 2025 World Championship. But no surgery was required, and Berard said then that he expected to be 100 percent ready to go for camp.
Berard saw his first NHL action last season, putting up six goals and 10 points in 35 games while averaging 10:43 of ice time — and playing with a bad shoulder. The 2020 fifth-round pick (No. 134 overall) made his pro debut with AHL Hartford in 2023-24, scoring 25 goals and finishing with 48 points in 71 games. In addition to his time withe the Rangers, he played 30 games for the Wolf Pack last season, finishing with nine goals and 23 points.
“I think Berard’s in there,” Cohen said.
Not that Cohen is dismissing Perreault’s chances — especially not before seeing him at camp. The Rangers’ 2023 first-round pick piled up points in his two seasons at Boston College before signing with the Rangers. But Cohen said Perreault appeared to be overthinking things during his brief stint with the Rangers.
Cohen said Sullivan “wants to play fast” and knows how to deal with kids, which should work to the benefit pf Perreault and Berard.
“Sullivan can bring along young players,” Cohen said. “That’s not his specialty, but he doesn’t hurt them. And so Sullivan will definitely be a really good coach, even if it’s just for preseason for Gabe to kind of understand what he’s got to do.”
To Cohen, that could mean starting the talented young forward on a lower line — if he makes the team.
“There will be no mixed messages,” he said. “Sullivan wants his team to play fast, there’s no question. I think Perreault can do that, and if it’s a matter of starting him on the third line, I don’t think that’s bad.”
Othmann is 22 and has had two stints with the Rangers; 22 of his 25 NHL games came last season, but he managed just two assists while averaging 9:57 of ice time.
Cohen isn’t as high on Othmann’s chances, this season or in the future.
“Othmann’s been a little weird, in the sense that his power game hasn’t really come along with any kind of scoring,” he said. “I think we all kind of expected more scoring. So it’s kind of like — is it the speed? It might be. I’m not sure he’s gotten enough speed yet.”
Speed, or the lack thereof, could be the deciding factor in Othmann’s future
“I don’t know what he looks like now, and maybe over the summer that’s been fixed,” Cohen said. “But from what I saw last year, he’s going to struggle to make the team. If he got faster, then I think Sullivan will find a role for him, because he does do all those other things, and maybe he’ll put him with the right linemate and he’ll start scoring a bit.
“But I have to admit that he was disappointing last year.”
While Cohen said having Perreault start the season with Hartford might not be the worst thing in the world for their top prospect, beginning a third straight season in the AHL would likely be more damaging for Othmann.
In fact, Cohen said he’d have moved him during 2024-25.
“To be honest, I think they should have traded him last year, while the bar was still higher,” he said. “What happens now if he gets sent down — then his value goes down, right? Where last year it wasn’t going to go down — it would be somebody else’s worry that hey, we’ll get him up to speed.
“But at this point, you can’t worry about it now. If he goes down, he goes down and it will be for the best. But will there be a worry about him. Yeah, I think so.”
Crisis in St. Petersburg: Why Flyers’ Top Goalie Prospect Egor Zavragin Is Being Ignored
Top Philadelphia Flyers goalie prospect Egor Zavragin has yet to play for his KHL club, SKA St. Petersburg, in the early goings of the 2025-26 season.
Zavragin, 20, was on SKA's bench as an unused substitute in Monday's 3-2 loss to Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod, where 22-year-old Artemi Pleshkov drew the start and stopped 28 of 31 shots.
Zavragin's place on the bench as the backup goalkeeper was actually a promotion for him, too.
On Saturday, Sergei Ivanov started for SKA against the Shanghai Dragons, but was yanked after 35:18 after allowing six goals on 20 shots. Pleshkov replaced Ivanov and stopped all five shots he faced in the final 23:37 of the 7-4 loss.
This is all to say that, without Zavragin on the ice, SKA is disappointingly 0-2-0 on the season.
The KHL outfit already replaced Roman Rotenberg, Matvei Michkov's former coach, with NHL legend Igor Larionov moving behind the bench, and the roster features players like Joseph Blandisi (already suspended), former Flyers forward Mikhail Vorobyov, veteran center and former NHLer Andrei Loktionov, Nikolay Goldobin, Rocco Grimaldi, Trevor Murphy, and St. Louis Blues prospect Matvei Korotky.
If Larionov's poor luck continues, he may be forced to turn to Zavragin, which would be something certainly celebrated by the Flyers across the pond here in Philadelphia.
Flyers fans may recall how the 20-year-old former third-round pick dominated in the KHL last season under heavy expectations, going 20-14-3 across 43 games between SKA and HC Sochi and ripping off a 2.50 GAA, a .917 save percentage, and four shutouts.
In the Gagarin Cup playoffs, Zavragin was 1-2-0 with a 3.22 GAA and .913 save percentage across four games.
Plus, it certainly doesn't help Zavragin's case that only three of SKA's top 10 point-getters from last season remain.
Ivan Demidov, Alexander Nikishin, Arseniy Gritsyuk, Zakhar Bardakov, Tony DeAngelo, and, potentially, Evgeny Kuznetsov, have all left for the NHL, while only Sergei Plotnikov, Marat Khairullin, and Valentin Zykov remain.
If things don't continue to trend upwards for Zavragin, perhaps the Flyers will have other ideas on how to best develop their top goalie prospect that don't involve the KHL.
