2026 Rangers Season Previews: Chris Drury

Entering his sixth year at the helm of the New York Rangers, Chris Drury embarks on what is arguably the most pivotal season of his career. After two painfully miserable seasons where the team imploded and missed the playoffs, the retool announced in The Letter 2.0 is in full swing. And, failure to take a step in the right direction could result in a change of heart from the organization that so far has all but promised him total job security.  

Previous Performance

I'll start by saying what the majority of the fan base seemingly wants to hear: Chris Drury's tenure as general manager of the New York Rangers has been more of a failure than a success. Two early runs to the Eastern Conference Final are all well and good, but when it's unfurled as the disaster that these last two seasons have been, it's hard to feel great about where the team is at.

Drury has—for the most part—done the things he should have, year-in and year-out. When the team was in a position to make the playoffs, he bought at the trade deadline. Throughout that contention window, he always went after the bigger name free agents, but never did so recklessly. He was able to sign Vincent Trocheck and Vladislav Gavrikov to incredibly team-friendly deals, signed vets to one-year, low-cost contracts, and always found good depth players to stock in the AHL. 

Prior to the 2024-25 season, his only major mistakes were trading Pavel Buchnevich for essentially nothing, overpaying Patrik Nemeth and Barclay Goodrow—although you have to credit him some for recognizing those mistakes and getting out of those deals—and not going all-in and acquiring Jake Guentzel in 2024, regardless of what it cost. Even if there was any doubt of Guentzel signing a long term deal, you could argue that the Rangers should have pushed all their chips in to the middle of the table that year. 

Guentzel aside, Drury has bought responsibly at the deadline. Adding Frank Vatrano, Andrew Copp, Justin Braun, and Tyler Motte at the 2022 deadline—a year they weren’t even expected to seriously contend—was fantastic work. He didn’t give up anything too costly and it resulted in the team getting back to the Eastern Conference Final for the first time since 2015. The same logic applied in 2024 when he managed to acquire Alex Wennberg and Jack Roslovic for extremely reasonable prices.

Arguably his best work came in 2023 when he managed to get both Vladimir Tarasenko and Patrick Kane. You can blame Drury all you want for this team’s shortcomings, but that group of players couldn’t get out of the first round with those two cemented in their top nine, and that might actually be this organization's biggest failure in the last decade. 

As Eric pointed out in last year’s preview, the 2024-25 season was really where things began to go wrong. The decision to waive Barclay Goodrow clearly impacted the room, and whether that was Drury’s fault or the players' fault—or both—it became a massive issue that derailed not just that season, but also this most recent one. Drury quickly came to the (right) conclusion that the team as constructed wasn’t good enough, and things needed to change. He jettisoned Jacob Trouba, re-acquired J.T. Miller, and continued cleaning house throughout the season and into the summer, eventually shipped off Chris Kreider off to Anaheim.

The one thing you can say about Drury is that he doesn’t hesitate to act to change things when they aren’t working. 

2025 Free Agency

Coming off a disastrous 2024-25 season, Drury went out and signed Vladislav Gavrikov, Justin Dowling, Derrick Pouliot, Taylor Raddysh, Trey Fix-Wolansky to contracts in free agency, and and Conor Sheary to a PTO that would later turn into a one-year contract. While most of those were minor depth signings, the Gavrikov business proved to be fantastic. While it might have seemed like a lot of money and too much term at the time, the rising cap and depleted market has only proven that to be a worthwhile addition to this Rangers team. 

2025 Trade Deadline

Alas, as the season progressed and the Rangers remained towards the bottom of the league’s standings, it became clear more change was necessary. Drury sold Carson Soucy, Sam Carrick, Derrick Pouliot, and Brennan Othmann for draft capital and prospects needing a change of scenery.

Of course, that wasn’t all of the business. He also made the decision to send Artemi Panarin to Los Angeles in exchange for Liam Greentree and middle-round draft picks. It’s no secret many Rangers fans were not happy about that trade. But the fact of the matter is Drury did the best he could within the confines of the situation and, all things considered, made the right decision. The Rangers did not have Panarin in their long term plans. That is the end of that conversation. 

Would we have liked to keep him for another two years on the $11 million deal he signed in Los Angeles? Sure. But nothing about the situation seemed like that was going to be the case. So, it’s either trade him for what you can get, or let him walk at the end of the year for nothing. The Rangers didn’t get the first-round pick fans may have wanted, but they did get a former first-round pick in Liam Greentree, and he's going to be NHL-ready much sooner than any actual draft pick they would have gotten, especially from a team that made the playoffs last year. 

2026 Offseason

Chris Drury and the Rangers were incredibly active this summer. After declaring a retool in The Letter 2.0, Drury went out and acquired Pavel Dorofeyev, Marcus Pettersson, Sean Durzi, and Cole Beaudoin, all while shuffling around draft picks and depth pieces.

Drury’s main objective was for this team to add puck-moving defensemen to the blueline and to continue to progress towards the goal of getting faster, younger, and harder to play against. When all was said and done, Drury completely revamped this team’s blue line, added a top scorer from the team that was just two wins away from clinching a Stanley Cup, and added a recent first-round drafted center that has a high ceiling and fits the mold for what this team is looking to build around. 

Giving up two future first round picks in order to pull off some of these trades was certainly a risk, and I completely understand where that concern from fans is coming from. But you have to remember that the goal is for this team to retool. So, they acquired young talent that is much closer to being NHL-ready in Cole Beaudoin and Greentree, got established puck-moving defensemen who can play key roles through this retool, and added a 25-year-old coming off back-to-back 35+ goal seasons, locking him up for the next seven years.

Not only was Drury successful on the trade front, but the team had a fantastic draft, adding arguably the most NHL-ready defenseman in the class to their prospect pool, and was successful in improving this team on paper. How he builds on that throughout this season is going to be crucial.

Expectations

Heading into this season, I’d say Drury has five main objectives he should look to accomplish.

The first of which is signing Gabe Perreault, who will be an RFA at the end of this season, to a long-term extension as soon as possible. He may only have 54 NHL games in the league under his belt, but Perreault has already shown that he is capable of being a top performer on this team. And as we saw with the Fraser Minten signing, as well as the Ryan Leonard signing, his price is only going to increase.

While Drury's chances of signing him to an eight-year deal have come and gone, he can still achieve this by signing him to seven-year deal with an AAV under $10 million. The longer he waits, the more likely it is that Drury loses leverage and fumbles what should be his number one internal priority.

The second is to not rush to make a decision with Will Cuylle. Cuylle is surely primed for another bridge deal, maybe something in the neighborhood of $5.5 million for two years. With that being the most likely scenario, there isn't be a rush to get him signed to an extension. The only reason I’m hesitant here is because there is a chance Cuylle has more value on the trade market than he does on the Rangers. While his style of play is certainly exciting, it does feel like his ceiling is a second-liner, with it more likely that he's just an excellent third liner. 

Third on the list is to come up with a definitive plan with Braden Schneider. If there is any sort of trade market that exists for this player, it needs to be identified and he needs to be moved. If one or both of Scott Morrow and Vincent Iorio stick around or clear waivers, they should be more than capable of taking over the role Schneider is expected to play in New York this season. Plus, there has to be a scenario in which Cuylle and Schneider can be packaged in a deal to help the Rangers acquire a player they need more.  

The final two items center on ensuring the development of the Rangers young talent is handled properly, and to navigate the trade deadline appropriately. Drury has proven capable of the latter, but these two things do go hand in hand. If the Rangers are on the fringes of a wildcard spot and Beaudoin, Greentree, Lamb, Sykora, and/or Chmelar are all tearing it up in the AHL, there should be no hesitation to sell on expiring UFAs and give the kids an extended run at the NHL level. On the flip side, if the Rangers are solidly a playoff team, they should only be buyers if the deal is clearly worth it, and their 2027 first rounder should be off the table entirely.

Predictions 

In terms of what we can expect from Drury this season, it’s fair to say we all know how he operates at this point. If there’s a move to be made that can make this team better he will certainly explore it, but don’t expect him to be an aggressive buyer or seller.

The Rangers should be better this season, and could certainly be in the wild card race by the time the trade deadline comes around. No matter what, I expect Drury will continue to take a conservative approach. If they’re a wild card team, he’s not going to give up his first round pick for a rental, but if a guy like Casey Mittelstadt or Morgan Frost can be had for a second and a fourth round pick or a prospect they no longer think they need, it wouldn’t surprise me if Drury jumps on it. 

On the other hand, if the Rangers aren’t in the playoff picture or close to it by the trade deadline, I’d expect Oliver Bjorkstrand, Eeli Tolvanen, Taylor Raddysh, and Joe Veleno to all be sold. Schneider could turn into an offseason decision, but as I said, packaging him with Cuylle in a trade that can land them a surefire top-six forward who can be here for the next 4-6 years should be an option that's explored.

The Bottom Line

Love him or hate him, Chris Drury is going to be running this team for the foreseeable future. We know how the Rangers operate. That could change quickly, but it would have to take another truly disastrous season to really start having that conversation.

Love him or hate him, Drury had a good offseason and did everything he set out to do.

Will it play out the way he hopes? We'll find out soon.