{"id":629029,"date":"2026-07-23T02:48:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T02:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/629029\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T02:48:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T02:48:13","slug":"rangers-drew-fortescue-understands-how-important-this-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/629029\/","title":{"rendered":"Rangers&#8217; Drew Fortescue understands how important this summer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Before the Rangers <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/06\/26\/sports\/rangers-select-alberts-smits-with-no-5-pick-in-2026-nhl-draft\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">drafted Alberts Smits fifth overall<\/a> last month, Drew Fortescue headlined the club\u2019s defensive prospects.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Last season, the Blueshirts were willing to burn a year of Fortescue\u2019s entry-level contract to bring the defenseman to Manhattan at the conclusion of his junior season at Boston College in late March \u2014 just like they <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/03\/17\/sports\/gabe-perreault-reacts-to-move-to-rangers-second-power-play-unit\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">did with his Eagles teammate Gabe Perreault<\/a> the year before.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Fortescue, who turned 21 shortly after the Rangers season ended, <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/04\/10\/sports\/drew-fortescue-using-final-rangers-stretch-as-important-experience\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">held his own<\/a> through his first nine NHL games.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The entire experience, however, sent the Pearl River native into the offseason with a plethora of areas he wanted to focus on in his game. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before the Rangers drafted Alberts Smits fifth overall last month, Drew Fortescue headlined the club\u2019s defensive prospects.\u00a0 Last&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5111],"tags":[5,3328,35,5190,5193,4,36,43,336],"class_list":["post-629029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-rangers","tag-hockey","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-rangers","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkrangers","tag-nhl","tag-rangers","tag-sports","tag-sports-plus"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116967014681712187","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}