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Why there’s plenty reason to question if Rangers have right GM for retool
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- Why there’s plenty reason to question if Rangers have right GM for retool
Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports
The New York Rangers did not make the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season. They will not make them this season. Barring some kind of miraculous turnaround, it's hard to imagine they'll qualify for the postseason in 2026-27.
Unless Rangers owner James Dolan changes his mind, all three of those seasons will have one thing in common: Chris Drury as the general manager.
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Dolan went on WFAN radio on Jan. 6 and was asked if he still believed in Drury, even after the Rangers failed to make the playoffs in 2024-25, one year after winning the Presidents' Trophy. His response: "Yes, absolutely. He and (coach) Mike Sullivan are installing a new culture into that club, and that does not happen overnight. … What I can tell you about Mr. Drury from the day I hired him is Chris Drury is a winner and a competitor. He's won, himself, he can't stand to lose."
But since then, the Rangers have done almost nothing but lose — they've dropped seven of eight going into a road game Friday against the San Jose Sharks and are last in the Eastern Conference.
Drury sent a letter to Blueshirts fans last Friday basically throwing in the towel on this season and telling everyone that changes – likely major ones — are coming.
The question in the minds of the fans who chant "Fire Drury" as they watch loss after loss at Madison Square Garden is whether he's the right person to make those changes.
Chris Drury's tenure has many questioning if Rangers GM is right person to lead them
Peter Carr/The Journal News / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Drury does have some accomplishments since taking over as president and GM, after Dolan fired John Davidson and Jeff Gorton in May 2021. The Rangers advanced to the Eastern Conference Final in 2022 and 2024, and won the Presidents' Trophy as regular-season champion in 2023-24.
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The two trips to the East Final came under different coaches. Drury fired Gerard Gallant after the Rangers were ousted in the first round of the playoffs in 2023. He hired Peter Laviolette, who had great success in his first season but got the axe after the Rangers missed the playoffs in 2024-25.
Drury finally got his man when the Rangers hired Sullivan, a two-time Cup winner with the Pittsburgh Penguins, on May 2. But the Pens missed the playoffs in each of his last three seasons, and he'll begin a fourth straight early summer in April.
What the Rangers accomplished in Drury's first three seasons isn't nothing; however, most of the personnel that accomplished those feats joined the team before Drury's ascension to the GM role. But that's also one of the problems — the Rangers under Drury drafted poorly and struggled to develop talent.
Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images
Noah Laba, a center taken in the fourth round (No. 111) of the 2022 NHL Draft, is the only player selected under Drury's aegis who's become an NHL regular – he made the team as a third-line center this season but that's likely his ceiling. Brennan Othmann, his initial first-round pick (No. 16 overall in 2021) scored his first goal last week in his 34th NHL game.
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Forward Gabe Perreault, taken with the 23rd pick in 2023, is the Rangers' top under-23 player, according to The Athletic – and he's No. 120 (middle of the lineup player) among the 137 players in its rankings (in contrast, the archrival New York Islanders have four of the top 50).
Perreault shows flashes of promise as he settles into a regular NHL role, but the 20-year-old has all of three goals and seven points in 23 NHL games and needs to add strength and speed to complement his skills and smarts.
Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images
The Rangers also failed to develop their prospects. It's a trend that goes back to Drury's pre-GM days; after joining the Rangers in 2015, he was director of player personnel, assistant GM and general manager at AHL Hartford, and associate GM. Perehaps Drury didn't have final say on draft disasters like Lias Andersson (No. 7 in 2017) and Vitaly Kravtsov (No. 9 in 2018) or disappointments such as Kaapo Kakko (No. 2 in 2019) and Alexis Lafreniere (No. 1 in 2020), but he was certainly involved in the process.
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Andersson and Kravtsov are gone from the NHL. Drury traded Kakko to the Seattle Kraken in December 2024 for bottom-four defenseman Will Borgen (and signed him to a five-year, $20.5 million contract extension).
Lafreniere isn't a bust, but he's nowhere near being what NHL teams expect when they get the No. 1 pick in the draft. His 28-goal, 57-point season in 2023-24 represents career highs in both categories. At age 24, Lafreniere is a useful middle-six forward who has yet to show he can be anything more than that.
Kyle Ross-Imagn Images
One area where Drury appears to have smartened up is moving on from veterans. He angered the locker room with his handling of Barclay Goodrow's departure in the summer of 2024, as well as his letter to the other 31 NHL general managers early in the 2024-25 season indicating that captain Jacob Trouba and veteran forward Chris Kreider were available for trade despite each player having a 15-team no-trade clause in his contract.
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Trouba did agree to be dealt to the Anaheim Ducks in December 2024 – but quickly went public with his displeasure over the way the trade was handled. Drury must have learned something from that, because Kreider complemented the team on how he was treated when the Rangers sent him to Anaheim last June.
GM Chris Drury must make decisions on trading key Rangers veterans
Drury also got out ahead of things with Artemi Panarin last week. The GM reportedly told Panarin a contract extension is not forthcoming for the pending unrestricted free agent, and the Rangers will try to move him ahead of the March 6 NHL Trade Deadline.
Panarin, who turns 35 on Oct. 30 and carries an average annual value of $11.642 million, has a full no-move clause, so he can determine if he wants to be traded and where he's willing to go. He's No. 1 on TSN's latest "Trade Bait" list.
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Threading this needle won't be so easy since the Rangers and Panarin's representation must work together on sending New York's leading scorer six years running somewhere that he'll sign off on. Can Drury be trusted with this delicate situation, one that is crucial to get right for the Rangers?
Center Mika Zibanejad and captain J.T. Miller are 32 and have lengthy contracts with no-move clauses. It wouldn't be a surprise if Drury offers them a chance to move on, though Miller reportedly isn't going anywhere. Two-way center Vincent Trocheck, also 32, has three more seasons remaining on a deal with an AAV of $5.625 million and could draw plenty of interest from Stanley Cup contenders.
These aren't salary dumps. The Rangers need Drury to make sound hockey trades now. Is he capable of doing so?
Isaiah J. Downing-Imagn Images
Drury and the Rangers also have to decide what to do about 24-year-old defenseman Braden Schneider , a situation not dissimilar to what they faced with K'Andre Miller a year ago. They again have a young D-man, a former first-round draft pick, who's been a lineup regular for five seasons yet backsliding in his development. Like Miller, Schneider's due a sizeable raise as a pending restricted free agent with arbitration rights at season's end.
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He sent Miller to the Carolina Hurricanes on July 1; does the same fate await Schneider, who's already drawing interest ahead of the trade deadline? And what would he bring back? That's a young valuable asset, as is Alexis Lafreniere. The Rangers must maximize the return to the fullest if they move on from either Lafreniere or Schneider.
The GM isn't going anywhere. Dolan loves him some Chris Drury – a lot more than most Rangers fans do these days. Whether he'll still love him after a second straight playoff miss, a batch of trades, a free-agent market all but devoid of big names to lead the retool, and not a whole lot of talent in the pipeline is still to be determined.
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