Rangers select Tomas Chrenko with No. 81 overall pick in NHL Draft
The New York Rangers have taken Tomas Chrenko with the No. 81 overall pick in the 2026 NHL Draft on Saturday.
In his final ranking of the top 120 prospects available in this year’s draft, Daily Faceoff prospect analyst Steven Ellis ranked Chrenko as the No. 53 player in the pool.
“He’s not big, and some scouts wonder if he’d be better on the wing in the NHL,” Ellis wrote. “But as a pure shooter, especially on the power play, there’s a lot to love. Chrenko needs to round his game out a bit more to convince me he’ll be an NHLer, but the talent is definitely there.”
Chrenko stands at 5-foot-11, and having turned 18 in November of 2025, is on the older side of first-time draft-eligible players.
Like many highly-ranked prospects from outside the top five major hockey countries, Chrenko put on a show at the IIHF U-20 World Junior Championship in his draft year.
In five games for Slovakia, the diminutive center found the back of the net five times while dishing out three assists for a total of eight points as the Slovaks lost a trio of one-goal games in the group stage while earning a convincing win over Team Germany before bowing out in the elimination round with a 7-1 loss at the hands of the Canadians.
While it was his goalscoring ability that flashed on the international stage, Chrenko shone as a distributor in club competition this year with HK Nitra of the Slovak Extraliga, where he racked up 31 points on nine goals, and 22 assists in 44 regular season appearances before adding 12 points in 19 playoff games.
While the Slovak league is a clear cut below the level of competition found in Sweden, Finland and Switzerland, the fact that Chrenko was solidly productive while competing against men is an encouraging omen.
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