How did we get here? How did the New York Rangers go from a bounce away from a 3-1 series lead in the Eastern Conference Final to a borderline lottery team? The Rangers had a small window to begin with. Then poor development, bad trades and signings, bad drafting, natural declining play, a bone-headed memo, and off-ice drama will lead to a team completely losing it. Funny thing is, most of this points to one man. Chris Drury destroyed the Rangers window to win, and he did so in spectacular fashion.
Poor drafting and prospect development
There are many reasons why the Rangers destroyed their window to win a Cup. One of the easiest–and shortest–reasons is poor drafting. True Cup contenders draft well and supplement their roster with kids that eventually take over from stars. Carolina is the poster child for this, replacing aging veterans with players like Seth Jarvis, Martin Necas, Jack Drury, Alexander Nikishin, Jackson Blake, and soon Bradly Nadeau. That dates back to the 2017 draft, and not all of these are first round picks.
The Rangers, across two GMs in this span, have nothing to show for all their drafting in that range. The Rangers drafted in the top-ten four times (Lias Andersson, Vitali Kravtsov, Kaapo Kakko, Alexis Lafreniere). They made an additional 5 picks in the first round from 2017 through 2023 (Nadeau’s draft year, to keep comparisons the same). Of all those first round picks, only Lafreniere, Braden Schneider, and Gabe Perreault remain, and both Laf and Schneider are now in trade speculation.
The Rangers couldn’t even keep pace with Carolina using only first round picks. Will Cuylle is a solid NHLer, but he’s looking more like a third liner than a top six forward. Matt Rempe and Adam Edstrom are useful fourth liners. Noah Laba is likely a 3C on contending teams. Brennan Othmann was a bust. In seven drafts, the Rangers have just six players who are solid NHLers, seven if you include Perreault. Only two are top-six players.
This is the only area where we can say Drury destroyed the Rangers with some help. Jeff Gorton and his scouting staff didn’t draft well in this pivotal period. Drury overhauling the entire scouting department hasn’t paid dividends yet either, and while there are some solid prospects, only Perreault projects as a bonafide top line player.
Building a winner through free agency is dead, if it ever was alive to begin with. Cheap talent is the way to go.
Drury destroyed the Rangers window in his first summer as GM (mostly)
The Rangers rebuild wasn’t a true rebuild, since the Rangers accelerated it by signing Artemi Panarin and trading for Jacob Trouba. But at the time it worked, even if Trouba wound up being overpaid. Panarin is easily the best UFA signing in Rangers history, and Trouba was serviceable though overpaid until his divorce with the Rangers. But Gorton and John Davidson had a plan: Build around the Kreider-Zibanejad-Buchnevich line by adding grit to the bottom half of the lineup.
James Dolan bought the snake oil Drury was selling, and the rest, as they say, is history. Let’s break down how Drury destroyed the Rangers, going year by year, move by move. And this time, it will be longer than one word.
2021-2022 – misreading the roster
- Fired David Quinn, hired Gerard Gallant.
- Signed Barclay Goodrow to 6 year contract at $3.6 million.
- Traded Brett Howden to Vegas for Nick DeSimone and a 4th rounder (Noah Laba).
- Traded Pavel Buchnevich to St. Louis for absolutely nothing.
- Didn’t draft a single NHL player in the 2021 draft
- Caveat: Jaroslav Chmelar (6th rounder) and Brody Lamb (4th rounder) look promising.
- Signed Patrik Nemeth to 3 year contract with a $3 million cap hit
- Traded for and extended Ryan Reaves for 2 years, $1.75 million per year.
- Other minor signings: Dryden Hunt, Jarred Tinordi, Greg McKegg
- Trade deadline: Andrew Copp, Frank Vatrano, other bottom of the lineup players.
The Summer of 2021 is the foundation for how Drury destroyed the Rangers. Most of these moves are noise, and the Howden trade did eventually work out because of Laba, but there are three moves that stand out: signing Goodrow, trading Buchnevich, and signing Nemeth.
Goodrow was overpaid from the start, no matter how much we tried to spin that contract. Nemeth was a bad signing from the start and Drury eventually had to attach picks to make him go away.
But the real issue, the foundation for how Drury destroyed the Rangers, was in the Buchnevich trade. The Rangers have spent each trade deadline trying to replace Buchnevich and simply couldn’t do it. Buchnevich was the catalyst for that line that no one could replace. Even if the logic–moving him to make top-six space for Kakko and Lafreniere–was sound, it was clear Drury and his new coach were not on the same page. Instead, we got Goodrow playing top-six minutes until the trade deadline.
The trade deadline was fine, with Drury landing Andrew Copp, Frank Vatrano, and others for mostly spare parts aside from Morgan Barron. But this was a flawed team that ran out of gas against Tampa in the Eastern Conference Final.
2022-2023 – an embarrassing follow up
- Traded Alex Georgiev for picks.
- Drafted Noah Laba, Victor Mancini, and Adam Sykora.
- Attached a 2nd round pick to Nemeth and traded both to Arizona for Ty Emberson.
- Traded Nils Lundkvist to Dallas for a 1st round pick.
- Traded Ryan Reaves to Minnesota for a draft pick.
- Claimed Jake Leschyshyn off waivers.
- Signed Ben Harpur for…reasons?
- Re-signed Filip Chytil to 4 year contract.
- Trade deadline: Vlad Tarasenko, Niko Mikkola, Patrick Kane, Tyler Motte round 2
The Summer of 2021 left the Rangers with no cap space, so the Summer of 2022 was rather boring. But Drury destroyed the Rangers chances at postseason success by simply ignoring the need to fill out the bottom of the roster, notably a 3C, and instead sacrificed all the Rangers momentum by dressing 17 skaters for multiple games so they could fit Kane in at the deadline.
The Rangers did not need Kane. They needed a bottom of the lineup center. They were summarily crushed in the first round, not by series score (4-3), but by on-ice play. The Devils controlled that series from Game 3 and on, beating the Rangers 4-0 in Games 5 and 7. This series was not as close as people made it out to be.
Drury destroyed the Rangers chances in 2022-2023 with his moves the year before. He wasn’t on the same page as his coach either, and that showed with burying both Kakko and Lafreniere in the bottom six and again going with Goodrow in the top-six. The Tarasenko trade addressed that need, but then Drury destroyed the Rangers chances by forcing Kane on the team.
The players had a small mutiny against Gallant as well, forcing Drury to eventually fire the coach.
2023-2024 – The final kick at the can
We didn’t know it at the time, but 2023-2024 was the final kick at the can for the Rangers. The roster was showing signs of decline, notably with Ryan Lindgren going from top pair defenseman to barely serviceable. To Drury’s credit, he saw that coming and didn’t commit long term to Lindgren. But he never brought in someone to play with Adam Fox.
- Fired Gerard Gallant, hired Peter Laviolette.
- Re-signed Zac Jones to 2 year extension.
- Signed Blake Wheeler to 1 year, $800k contract
- How many wingers is that to try to replace Buchnevich?
- Signed Erik Gustafsson, Jonathan Quick, and Nick Bonino to 1 year deals to fill out the roster.
- Extended K’Andre Miller and Alexis Lafreniere to bridge contracts.
- Trade deadline: Alex Wennberg, Chad Ruhwedel, Jack Roslovic
This was the only year the Rangers had a true Cup contender. But lack of talent up front, again caused by poor signings and no cap space from that Summer of 2021, led to the Rangers demise.
In all fairness, Wheeler, Gustafsson, and Quick were solid signings. They did their jobs. This might be the only year where Drury didn’t destroy the Rangers with actions from that season.
In fact, we can argue Peter Laviolette’s lineup decisions against Carolina and Florida crushed their chances. Notably, forcing Filip Chytil to 1RW–again in an attempt to replace Buchnevich–instead of the greater need of a scoring punch at 3C. Braden Schneider and Jacob Trouba flipped spots briefly to great success, but that didn’t stick. Wheeler was forced back into a top line role and that backfired too.
Still, the Rangers won their first 7 games that postseason and were a bounce from a 3-1 series lead in the Eastern Conference Final. This was the one that got away.
Summer 2024-Today: It all falls apart
We didn’t really see the foundation how Drury destroyed the Rangers until the Summer of 2024. This is where Drury shot himself in the foot not once, not twice, but thrice.
- Traded for Reilly Smith. No cap space meant this was the only “big” move.
- “Drama” in waiving Barclay Goodrow.
- Failed to trade Jacob Trouba in the offseason.
- The Artemi Panarin sexual assault allegations/NDA.
- Rumored offseason mutiny.
- The idiotic trade memo.
- Traded Jacob Trouba to Anaheim for Urho Vaakanainen and a 4th round pick.
- Traded Kaapo Kakko to Seattle for Will Borgen and 3rd/6th round picks.
- Extended Borgen to 5 year contract.
- Traded Filip Chytil, Victor Mancini, 1st round pick to Vancouver for JT Miller, Jackson Dorrington.
- Sold Ryan Lindgren, Jimmy Vesey, and Reilly Smith at the deadline for picks and C-level prospects, and Calvin de Haan.
- Traded for Carson Soucy for some reason.
- Fired Peter Laviolette. Hired Mike Sullivan.
- Traded Chris Kreider for pennies on the dollar.
- Gave two year contracts to both Juuso Parssinen and Taylor Raddysh.
- Traded K’Andre Miller to Carolina for 2026 1st and Scott Morrow
- Signed Vlad Gavrikov to 7 year contract.
- Signed Conor Sheary to a PTO.
The foundation was laid in 2021, but Drury truly destroyed the Rangers over the course of one calendar year, from October 2024-October 2025.
Drury destroyed the Rangers by refusing to see the writing on the wall: The talent was aging and declining fast, they had no cap space, and Drury was forced to make moves in ways that upset many in the locker room. But the true kicker was the lack of direction. Aging and declining talent, a need to get younger and faster, yet trading youth for 30 year olds throughout. Drury destroyed the Rangers by simply not having a plan once the wheels started to fall off.
And oh boy, did the wheels ever fall off.
You all know the story: The Goodrow drama, the Trouba drama, the Panarin sexual assault and NDA, the offseason barbecue, the dumb trade memo, poor trades, and just no direction whatsoever. But how Drury killed the Rangers, and I mean truly killed the Rangers, was his approach. The players share a ton of blame, but Drury did not learn that he needed some kind of buffer between him and the players, and that the Mike Babcock method doesn’t work anymore.
To be fair and objective, most of the 2024-2025 season is on the players. Whatever their feelings were, they had a job to do and they were still talented enough to do it. They just didn’t even try. That was certainly a problem, but it was a problem of Drury’s own making. The trade memo set fire to a team already on edge from the summer, and the Rangers were officially dead.
Chris Drury destroyed the Rangers. Not through one move, but through many moves and reactions compounding on each other until the final product was what we see before us today.
There is no help coming
We can handle a bad season or two here in New York if we know there’s a plan and a future. That’s the icing on the cake in how Drury destroyed the Rangers. There is no future. There is no plan. The Rangers trotted out a lineup last night that consisted mostly of AHL players or “maybe” prospects. Injuries happen, but needing to play all of Conor Sheary, Taylor Raddysh, and Jonny Brodzinski at one time is a sign of poor roster construction.
It’s not even like there are kids that can take those spots right now. The kids that are NHL ready are already with the team: Laba, Morrow, Perreault, and Matthew Robertson. Brett Berard would’ve stuck if he were ready, but he was scoreless in 11 games in his first recall and didn’t even dress during his second recall. Othmann is likely a bust at this point. If you recall, Othmann was Drury’s first ever draft pick.
There is not one single prospect in the system that can replace a scoring void left by Mika Zibanejad, Artemi Panarin, Vincent Trocheck, or JT Miller. We don’t even know if any of these kids can replace Alexis Lafreniere’s production, let alone that quartet. There is no future. Drury destroyed the Rangers future with poor drafting and development.
There is no direction. If the Rangers were going for youth and speed, then why sacrifice key assets for JT Miller? Why trade for Carson Soucy? As much as Gavrikov has been solid, why sign him with the cap space from the Kreider trade? What is the direction of the team? Is it youth and speed? Or is it throw stuff at a wall and hope it works out? Sure seems like the latter.
Chris Drury destroyed the Rangers, and in doing so destroyed any trust fans have in the organization. The worst part of it is that it’s not just on-ice stuff either. All this off-ice garbage is stuff that the Rangers are supposed to avoid and be above. I’ve never seen a team in such disarray, and this includes the dark ages from 1998-2004.
The Rangers aren’t bad enough to tank with Adam Fox and Igor Shesterkin. They aren’t good enough to win either. Chris Drury destroyed the Rangers in five short years. And there is no end in sight.