2025 Rangers Season Previews: Chris Drury

Since I started writing for Blueshirt Banter and co-hosting Blueshirt Bandwidth at the beginning of last season, I've become known as a Chris Drury defender. This wasn't what I set out to do. This wasn't because of a preconceived agenda. I'm not a propaganda minister for the New York Rangers general manager; those kinds of people are paid, and usually paid well. And, much like with Chip, Joe Fortunato doesn't pay me no money to not do jobs. I've just tried to call things as I see them. And as I see them, there are several things that I believe are true:

1. Chris Drury is an above average GM relative to the competition out there, and that comparative metric is the only that really matters.
2. His performance since the original sin of the Pavel Buchnevich trade has been good, with his performance in this past offseason/free agency period being very good.
3. He is not without his flaws.
4. A lot of the hate that has been directed his way is unfair and unreasonable.

To wit, I wrote a piece last year entitled "Don't Judge Chris Drury for What He Was Never Asked To Do Until Now." I've brought that piece out from behind the paywall because I want you to read it in full, but I'll summarize it thusly:

Drury, as all new GMs do, inherited a team constructed largely by his predecessor. In three seasons, largely with that Jeff Gorton-constructed core accompanied by some savvy deadline work from Drury, those teams made two Eastern Conference Finals and won a President's Trophy. That's nothing to shake a hockey stick at. People who were asking for Drury to have completely reshaped the roster in his image starting from day one were missing that this was just simply not what James Dolan was asking Drury to do.

But with the catastrophe that was the 2024-25 New York Rangers, that's is now what Drury is being asked to do. He's being asked to mold this team in accordance with his vision of how they should look and how they should play.

The true judging of Chris Drury starts now.

Previous Performance

Let's take a (relatively?) brief and certainly not totally comprehensive tour of Drury's work leading up to last season. (I'll mostly be skipping depth signings and bridge deals, so if you want the total and completely rundown, PuckPedia has you covered.)

2021-22

I already mentioned Drury's original sin: shipping Pavel Buchnevich to the St. Louis Blues for Sammy Blais and a second round draft pick. Somehow "unmitigated disaster" just doesn't quite capture it. This was a move clearly made on the assumption that the Rangers were about to land Jack Eichel via trade from the Buffalo Sabres, and Drury was clearing cap space to make that happen. I don't need a billboard to tell you what happened—or, more to the point, what didn't happen—next.

That wasn't the only bump in that offseason. Drury also traded for Ryan Reaves—a tremendously fun personality who could punch people very hard but who also couldn't play hockey very well—allegedly at the behest of then-coach Gerard Gallant. He then inked Barclay Goodrow and Patrik Nemeth to bad, overpaid contracts.

He also signed Mika Zibanejad to his current 8-year, $8.5 million AAV contract extension. We've all discussed Mika's contract until we're blue in the face, and there's no denying that the alarming decline in Mika's game has made this contract an albatross. But while it was relatively easy at the time to look at the Goodrow contract and say it was a clear overpay for who and what that player was, the same is not true of this deal for Mika. Based on the facts in evidence at the time, this was good work, even if the no-movement clause (an Achilles heel for many an NHL GM, not just Drury) was regrettable, though probably regrettably unavoidable.

This was followed by signing Adam Fox to his 7-year, $9.5 million AAV contract, which is a steal for the quality of player Adam Fox is.

That trade deadline saw him add Frank Vatrano, Justin Braun, Tyler Motte, and Andrew Copp at the collective cost of Morgan Barron, a first round pick, a second rounder, a third rounder, two fourth rounders, and a fifth rounder. They weren't the flashiest of moves, but they were savvy and helped propel the Rangers into the Easter Conference Final ahead of expectations.

2022-23

The following offseason he added Vincent Trocheck on a 7-year, $5.625 AAV deal, in addition to some other minor moves. He also jettisoned a few of his previous mistakes, sending out Ryan Reaves and Patrik Nemeth (having to attach two second round draft picks to facilitate that one).

At that year's trade deadline he added Vladimir Tarasenko and Niko Mikkola from St. Louis in exchange for Hunter Skinner and Sammy Blais, plus a first and a third round draft pick. He again acquired Tyler Motte, this time for Julien Gauthier and a seventh round pick. And, finally, he brought Showtime to Broadway, dealing for Patrick Kane from the Chicago Blackhawks for Cooper Zech and a third round pick. Despite adding those big names, the Rangers fell in the first round to the New Jersey Devils in seven games.

2023-24

Working under some considerable constraints, Drury started this offseason making an array of low-cost signings: Jonathan Quick, Blake Wheeler, Nick Bonino, Tyler Pitlick, and Erik Gustafsson. None that you'd write home about, but also none that came with any real risk. And Gustafsson and Quick turned out to be quite good steals.

Heading into the deadline, Drury eschewed the big name veterans like he'd targeted the previous year. Instead he brought in Alex Wennberg from Seattle and Jack Roslovic from Columbus for the sum total of a second round pick and two fourth round picks. Again, nothing you're going to get overly excited about, but also nothing like the cost of some other deadline acquisitions. And it helped get the Rangers back to the Eastern Conference Final for the second time in three seasons.

2024-25

Here's where I start having a bone to pick with Drury.

He started by escaped from another of his previous mistakes by waiving Barclay Goodrow. And while this one wouldn't cost a couple a few draft picks to make happen, it did come with a considerable cost to the morale and sentiments in the locker room, offended as they were about how the Goodrow situation was handled.

Drury's biggest mistake that offseason, however, wasn't in anything that he did but instead what he didn't do. After trying to find a trade partner for Jacob Trouba, Trouba used the contractual provisions available to him in the form of a limited no-trade clause to block that presumed trade to the Detroit Red Wings. Having tried and failed, Drury relented and let Trouba walk back into the locker room, still wearing the captain's "C." In retrospect, it's clear he should have just pushed through, found a trade wherever he could, and been done with Trouba. Instead, Trouba's continued presence helped fuel a toxic environment in the room.

You can draw a straight line from there to the Rangers collapse, the infamous Memo, and then the eventual trades of Trouba, Kaapo Kakko, Ryan Lindgren, Jimmy Vesey, Riley Smith (who had been acquired in the offseason), and ultimately in this most recent offseason, Chris Kreider. That all brought back Urho Vaakanainen, Will Borgen, Juuso Parssinen, Calvin de Haan, Brendan Brisson, Carson Soucy, and an array of draft picks.

The biggest trade, however, wasn't dumping players the team was ready to move on from. It was, of course, reacquiring J.T. Miller (and minor league pieces) for Filip Chytil, Victor Mancini, and first round draft pick.

I imagine you don't need me to give you a full recap of this past offseason. If you do, you can check out Joe's overview here.

Why the long recap? In part, just for a refresher, because this section is entitled "previous performance." But also to reemphasize the point of my aforementioned piece: Chris Drury was never asked to rip the team down to the studs and reshape it purely in his desired way. Once the Rangers made that first surprising run to the Eastern Conference Final, he was asked to keep a window of contention going.

But once it all came crashing down last season? Well, that changed things. Now, it's fully his team. Now, he's not tinkering around the margins of Jeff Gorton's work.

Now, it's all on him.

Expectations

The expectations for Chris Drury this year are tied pretty directly to the expectations for the entire team this year. I don't want to spoil our upcoming Blueshirt Banter Season Preview Roundtable (out on Oct. 6), but I think reasonable expectations would have the Rangers back in the playoffs, and ideally winning a round, if not two.

It's not hard to identify the issues with the roster as it appears to be coming together. They're weak down the middle. After the first defensive pair of Adam Fox and Vladislav Gavrikov, there are major questions about the defense. While some of the kids impressed in the preseason, it's looking increasingly like none of them will make the team, even the particularly deserving ones like Noah Laba, Scott Morrow, and Gabe Perreault.

As Joe and I discussed on the one-year anniversary episode of Blueshirt Bandwidth, it's a bit of an open question if Drury and the rest of the Rangers brass view the East as sufficiently weak so as to think the Rangers have a legitimate shot of winning multiple playoff rounds. The seemingly season-ending injury to Aleksander Barkov, and the injury to Matthew Tkachuk that looks to keep him out through about half the season, might have reset some internal expectations.

We'll have to wait until we're into the season to see if the Rangers performance will justify buying aggressively at the deadline. I think this team is going to be better than last year, but it's hard to imagine them as true contenders, the kind that would justify spending precious few assets on rentals to go for it.

But since there are areas where this team can and should be improved, we should expect Drury to look to address depth at center and defense.

Predictions

Again, while it's easy to see this team being better than last year, it's also hard to imagine this team being so good so as to justify pushing the chips all in. So don't expect any splashy moves at the trade deadline.

In a way, Drury's mind is probably already focused on the next offseason. With the possibility that Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel could hit the free agent market, he has to make two sets of plans: one set for landing one of these superstars, and another for what to do if both resign with their respective teams.

As the news of Kirill Kaprizov inking an 8 year, $17 million AAV mega-deal to stay with the Minnesota Wild should remind us—and as Chris Feldman so adroitly explained–you can't count on those guys ever coming to market. The smart odds are on them staying where they're at.

With that in mind, much of Drury's mindset this year will be keeping options open. That means delaying any talk of a contract extension with Artemi Panarin until he knows that McDavid and Eichel are off the table. And it will mean not adding a ton of money or term to keep as much cap flexibility as possible.

Conclusions

There's one thing I haven't mentioned yet. Much to the chagrin of the "Clown Drury" brigade online, the Rangers inked Drury to a multi-year contract extension at the beginning of this past offseason. The message there is clear: James Dolan has confidence in Drury and he's not going anywhere any time soon.

For the first time, Drury will truly be able to shape this Rangers roster into what he wants it to be, and to have them play the style of (USA) hockey he wants them to play.

In Drury we trust. We don't have any other choice.