An Overview of Chris Drury’s Free Agency Work for the Rangers
In a whirlwind day of signings and trades, the Rangers finally began to look like Drury’s team—and the results were hard to argue with.
This was a monumental July 1 for the New York Rangers. There's really no other way to say it.
Chris Drury has been systematically dismantling the core he inherited when he took the job over (including some players he elected to keep at the time) for the past 12 months. We're literally a year to the day from an apex of last summer's disastrous standoff with Jacob Trouba, a little over half a year from the Kaapo Kakko trade, three weeks from the Chris Kreider cap-dump trade, and do I even want to mention the supernova event of waiving you-know-who? No? OK, let's move on!
I know many of you disagree with this, but this truly feels like Drury's first real window to rebuild the team in his image. Last year's catastrophic crash and burn was messy enough to allow a full system reset, and James Dolan very clearly has no issues leaving the keys to the kingdom in Drury's pocket.
The day started off poorly enough, with Emily Kaplan casually dropping a note that Jack Eichel is expected to re-sign in Vegas over the course of the year.
NHL Free Agency Day!
— Emily Kaplan (@emilymkaplan) July 1, 2025
-Nikolaj Ehlers and Brock Boeser top players available. Good time to be them.
-Expectation around the league is that Vladisav Gavrikov will sign in NY to be Adam Fox's partner.
-Jack Eichel & Kirill Kaprizov eligible for (big!) extensions today. Expecting…
That, along with the notion that Kirill Kaprizov and (it's widely believed) Connor McDavid will also be re-upping with their current clubs, sort of torpedoes this two-year plan the Rangers seemed to be orchestrating behind the scenes.
