How World Juniors snub helped this Rangers youngster

The 18-year old Brett Howden couldn’t have seen then what the 20-year-old Brett Howden does now.

Months after he had been picked 27th overall by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the 2016 NHL Draft, Howden was cut from Canada’s World Junior Championships team. It was a devastating blow for the kid from Oakbank, Manitoba, but a lesson he now believes he needed for his own good.

“I think getting cut my first year really helped me become the player I am right now,” Howden said Tuesday after the second day of the Rangers’ prospect development camp. “It made me really open my eyes that nothing’s given to you and you gotta work for what you get.”

Howden is trying to put that idea in motion this week as he tries to make a good first impression in his new organization. The 6-foot-3, 200-pound center was part of the Ryan McDonagh trade in February, coming to New York along with Libor Hajek, Vladislav Namestnikov and draft picks from Tampa in exchange for the Rangers’ captain and J.T. Miller.

The Rangers currently have an excess of centers at their disposal, including Mika Zibanejad, Kevin Hayes, Filip Chytil, Lias Andersson, Ryan Spooner, Boo Nieves and Namestnikov, but Howden is not shying away from taking his shot.

“For me, I’m looking forward to having a big summer and training hard and getting ready for camp and trying to crack the squad come September,” Howden said.

After not making Team Canada for the 2017 tournament, Howden went back to the drawing board with his junior team to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. Throughout the second half of his season with the WHL’s Moose Jaw Warriors and the following summer, Howden worked with his coach Tim Hunter and general manager Alan Miller on what he could do to stand out among a crowded group of talented prospects.

Howden accepted getting out of his comfort zone on the ice, “trying to be the difference-maker instead of settling for good enough.”

“The way I rounded my game to now is all because of that,” Howden said.

By the time he got another chance to make the team for the 2018 tournament, he didn’t miss. And his play on the way to Canada’s gold medal — tallying three goals and four assists in seven games — did not go unnoticed.

“The World Juniors, the other lines were maybe bigger names to score goals and be the top line, [but] that line five-on-five scored 10 goals,” Rangers director of player personnel Gordie Clark said. “That was the best he looked, for me, as that’s going to be his game in the pros.”

What Clark saw in Howden was a two-way center who could forecheck, wasn’t afraid to go fight for the pucks in the corner, won all of his important faceoffs and then could set up or score goals on top of it all. His World Juniors performance convinced Clark he was “pretty close” to the pros.

“Now looking at it, [getting cut] was probably one of the best things that happened to me,” said Howden, a two-year captain for Moose Jaw who scored 24 goals and 75 points in 49 WHL games last year. “I’m really excited for what’s ahead. I’m going to work hard no matter what and see where it takes me.”

Andersson got on the ice Tuesday for the first time after sitting out Monday because his luggage and equipment hadn’t arrived with him from Europe. He still didn’t have it Tuesday, but borrowed a pair of skates from Chris Kreider and used a stick he had left at the Rangers’ practice facility at the end of last season.

“Hopefully I’ll be as fast as [Kreider],” Andersson said with a chuckle.