More Questions Than Answers Arise From Chris Drury's Media Availability

New York Rangers president and general manager Chris Drury spoke with the media for the first time on Wednesday night since before the start of training camp, and it feels as if we came away with more questions than answers. 

Of course, this media availability came a couple of weeks after Drury issued a letter outlining the Rangers’ intentions to retool the roster and just hours after he traded Panarin to the Los Angeles Kings in exchange for Liam Greentree and a conditional third and fourth-round pick, so there was a lot Drury had to clear up. 

Drury opened up with a statement in which he took accountability for the Rangers’ failures, while reiterating sentiments he put out in his Jan. 16 letter. 

“As the president and GM it’s ultimately my responsibility,” Drury said. “Coming into this year, we were viewed collectively, internally and externally, as a playoff caliber team, and we have underachieved… Our fans deserve the Stanley Cup, not a team just hoping to get in as the last wild card. So we felt it was best to start this organizational shift sooner than later, and that will be the guiding principle of every decision we make as an organization.”

In terms of the Panarin deal and its widely considered underwhelming return, Drury confirmed that he was informed late on Wednesday morning that Los Angeles was the only place Panarin wanted to go.

The main topic of conversation centered around Drury’s message to fans and trying to understand his vague wording in what many are proclaiming as The Letter 2.0.

Drury emphatically stated in this letter that the Rangers plan to embark on a retool and not a rebuild. 

What exactly is the difference between a retool and a rebuild? Retools are generally considered to be a small-scale restructuring of a roster, with the hopes of getting back into a contending state sooner rather than later, as opposed to a rebuild, which is usually a full teardown, with the goal of accumulating as many draft picks and young prospects in order to focus on the long-term future.

The direction Drury intends to go is a bit contradictory. Despite emphasizing the need to target young players and draft picks, he also says he wants the Rangers to become competitive as fast as possible, and the two mindsets simply don’t align. 

“I think there's a difference in a retool and a rebuild,” Drury said. “As we said in the letter, it is a retool. We're certainly not going to sit here and put a timeline on it right now. We're going to try to do everything we can to get back to being a contending team as quickly as we can. We have identified and continue to identity players that we want here and want to stay here and go forward and build around and move forward with.”

The Blueshirts’ core and exactly who Drury considers to be in the core were also questions left unanswered.

Drury writes in his letter that he intends to build around “our core players” but there’s a blurred line of who exactly he deems to be the core. 

Panarin has led the Rangers in points since arriving to New York in 2019, and he now finds himself out of town. 

The presumable core, purely based on assumption, consists of Adam Fox, Igor Shesterkin, J.T. Miller, and Mika Zibanejad. However, three out of four of those players are in their 30s, which doesn't exactly boil over so well when trying to project a team that could remain competitive long into the future. 

Meanwhile, Alexis Lafrenière and Braden Schneider, who are both 24 years old and match the archetype for a team looking to get younger, have been the subject of trade rumors.

The uncertainty regarding which players Drury classifies as a part of the Rangers’ core was not answered during Wednesday night’s press availability.

Understanding Why The Rangers Received An Underwhelming Package For Artemi PanarinMany New York

“I’m not going to go player by player on our team,” Drury said of the players who he wants to build around. “I think we have a lot of really good players at key positions. It has not worked out the way we had hoped. 

“We're going to continue to look back at decisions we made and choices we make and try and make better ones, but I can tell you, I still believe in a lot of players in that room. We're going to try to build around some of them and try to keep pushing this thing forward, and as I said in the letter, try to be a contender as soon as we can.”

The direction Drury is looking to take the Rangers in remains perplexing. 

Drury’s ambiguous statements on Wednesday night also didn’t provide much clarity on where the franchise currently stands and what it intends to do moving forward. 

Obviously, we have not seen his full vision put into motion, but based on how this team has been broken apart piece by piece since reaching the Eastern Conference Final in 2024, on top of the team’s poor product being put out on the ice and Drury’s contradicting retool plan, it is difficult to feel optimistic about the Rangers’ future.