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Is general manager Chris Drury the man to handle the Rangers ‘retool?
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- Is general manager Chris Drury the man to handle the Rangers ‘retool?
Peter Carr/The Journal News / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
The New York Rangers ' season was falling apart in mid-January when team president and general manager Chris Drury issued "Letter 2.0," a message to fans that management was throwing in the towel on the current season and would begin to "retool" for the future. Four months and one last-place finish in the Eastern Conference later, the question now is whether Drury is the man for the job.
Owner James Dolan told WFAN Radio in New York on Jan. 5 that he was confident the Rangers had the right people in charge and the Drury and first-year coach Mike Sullivan would remain in their jobs. Ironically, Dolan was on his way to Madison Square Garden that day to see the Blueshirts play the Utah Mammoth in what proved to be a disastrous game – not only did the Rangers lose 3-2 in overtime, they also lost starting goalie Igor Shesterkin and No. 1 defenseman Adam Fox to injuries that kept two of the team's most important players out until after the Olympic break.
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Things fell apart from there. The Rangers finished 21 points behind the third-place Philadelphia Flyers in the Metropolitan Division and 22 behind the Ottawa Senators for the second wild card in the East. It was the second straight non-playoff season for a franchise that got within two wins of the Stanley Cup Final in 2022 and 2024. The 25 games the Rangers played after the Olympic break were meaningless – a big reason 12 of the 14 home games didn't sell out.
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There's obviously lots of work to be done, but in a conference call with the media during breakup day on April 17, Drury wouldn't give any specifics.
"I'm not going to get into the timelines," Drury said via call (rather than in person at a press conference) when asked how close the Rangers are to getting back to the playoffs. "I think we have a lot of good players. We have a lot of talented players. As we said in the letter, certainly wasn't good enough to that point and we're trying to retool and find some different ways to have success. I do like a lot of our pieces, and I'm excited to begin the offseason and take a deeper look at it and try and figure out how to be better."
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They're going to have to be a lot better to return to the playoffs. Getting back to the postseason is going to take some doing, and it's fair to question whether Drury is the man for the job.
Rangers seeking premium talent in Drury-led "retool"
The Blueshirts have two elite players – Shesterkin (age 30) and Fox (28), each of whom has won postseason honors and is among the top half-dozen at his position. Both were on the roster when Drury was hired in May 2021. Mika Zibanejad is 33 but coming off a 34-goal, 78-point season and fills the role of a No. 1 center adequately; putting rookie Gabe Perreault and 2020 No. 1 overall pick Alexis Lafreniere on his wings for the final third of the season worked well.
Captain J.T. Miller is also 33 and had an injury-filled season. Vincent Trocheck , an excellent two-way center, turns 33 this summer. Drury held onto him at the NHL Trade Deadline in March but could make a deal during the offseason. Fox and 2025 free-agent signee Vladislav Gavrikov formed an excellent No. 1 pairing when Fox was healthy – which he was for just 55 of 82 games.
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Fox had 53 points (nine goals, 44 assists) and Gavrikov scored a career-high 14 goals; no other defenseman reached 20 points. Zibanejad was the only forward to finish with more than 25 goals and 60 points.
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The Blueshirts will get a premium choice among their 11 draft picks. New York finished with the third-worst record in the NHL, and per Tankathon has an 11.5 percent chance of landing the No. 1 pick in the draft lottery. But even that's no guarantee of success; Lafreniere was regarded as an elite player, if not a generational one, but has yet to reach 30 goals or 60 points in his six NHL seasons. There's also a late first-rounder, either from the Carolina Hurricanes or Dallas Stars , as the result of the trade that sent defenseman K'Andre Miller to the 'Canes last July.
The Rangers figure to have plenty of money to spend on free agents this summer — PuckPedia projects New York will have nearly $27 million of cap room. But there's no truly elite player to spend it on. Buffalo Sabres forward Alex Tuch looks like the best UFA who could be available — and he's not going to move the needle much, if at all.
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During the post-Olympic stretch, the Rangers' veteran talent was healthy and a new wave of young talent — headlined by forwards Gabe Perreault, Noah Laba , Tye Kartye , Jaroslav Chmelař, and Adam Sýkora , as well as defenseman Drew Fortescue — began to emerge. Drury viewed that as a sign of optimism, which could give him more of a reason to go for a quick retool as opposed to a more patient rebuilding process – even though Perreault is the only one who looks like a top-six forward and Fortescue is a bottom-four defenseman.
"Although the result of the season was not what we had hoped for, we were encouraged with how the team played to close out the year after the Olympic break," he said. "The brand of hockey we played over the last few months gives us something to build on going into next season.
"We are excited with the future holds with the players we have in our roster, the prospects that we've already drafted, and 11 picks we have in the upcoming draft. We're determined to take the momentum we've created and carry that forward for the 2026-27 season."
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The question is whether going 12-10-3 after the Olympics when there was no pressure to win was anything more than fool's gold – especially when their AHL farm team, the Hartford Wolf Pack, followed the parent club by finishing last in its division.
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Missing the playoffs in back-to-back seasons is often a GM's ticket to the unemployment line. Drury, who got a three-year extension last summer, has yet to show that he can build a winner. Dolan has expressed great confidence in his GM, but Drury has yet to prove that confidence is justified – and he'd better do it soon.
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