Speaking for the first time since the start of New York Rangers training camp on Sept. 17, team president and general manager Chris Drury was vague about how he plans to execute what he\u2019s framed as a \u201cretool.\u201d<\/p>\n
His Jan. 16 letter to fans<\/a> emphasized \u201cThis will not be a rebuild,\u201d which Drury reiterated during Wednesday\u2019s Zoom call with reporters, but it\u2019s unclear why he believes the worst team in the Eastern Conference is not in need of a full teardown or how long the retool will take.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re certainly not going to sit here and put a timeline on it right now,\u201d Drury said. \u201cWe\u2019re 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 identify players that we want here and want to stay here and go forward and build around.\u201d<\/p>\n The goal, according to Drury, is to build a Stanley Cup winner, \u201cnot a team just hoping to get in as the last wild card.\u201d But after trading Artemi Panarin to the Los Angeles Kings<\/a> on Wednesday in exchange for forward prospect Liam Greentree and a conditional 2026 third-round pick, with more players expected to go after the NHL\u2019s Olympic roster freeze lifts on Feb. 23, what exactly do the Rangers have to build around?<\/p>\n \u201cI understand and appreciate the question,\u201d Drury responded. \u201cI\u2019m not going to go player-by-player on our team, or players we\u2019re going to target in the league. I think we have a lot of really good players at key positions. It has not worked out the way we had hoped. We\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n That list surely starts with 27-year-old defenseman Adam Fox and 30-year-old goalie Igor Shesterkin, but the Rangers\u2019 lack of high-end firepower up front and overall depth at every position is cause for serious concern. They already ranked as one of the worst offensive teams in the league, and now the best scorer on a point-per-game basis in franchise history is heading across the country.<\/p>\n That leaves a couple of veteran forwards, Mika Zibanejad and captain J.T. Miller, to the carry an unreasonably heavy load. They\u2019ll each turn 33 in the next few months, making them suboptimal candidates to endure a retool of any length of time, but they both wield no-movement clauses and have expressed their desire to remain in New York, according to a league source. Drury is left with little choice but to hope they age gracefully.<\/p>\n Even if they change their minds, the Rangers couldn\u2019t expect much back in a trade due to their NMC protection, as was the case with Panarin.<\/p>\n \u201cI think some of our players in their younger 30s have a lot to give and are still extremely talented and good players in this league,\u201d Drury said. \u201cIt\u2019s my job to figure out how to get them the support they need.\u201d<\/p>\n The support will mostly have to come from outside the organization, adding another layer of difficulty to the retool.<\/p>\n Years of draft misses and developmental failures have put the Rangers in a precarious position. Their prospect pool was ranked 24th<\/a> in the NHL by The Athletic\u2019s Corey Pronman at the start of the season, with none making his list of top 100 players under the age of 23<\/a>. Greentree came in at No. 134, not too far behind top New York prospect Gabe Perreault at No. 120, which helps. But there\u2019s a dearth of foundational pieces who profile as top-of-the-lineup contributors in the coming years.<\/p>\n Drury didn\u2019t offer specifics when asked why they\u2019ve struggled to produce impactful young players and what changes they may consider to improve a shaky track record of scouting and developing, which came toward the end of a 15-minute call that was light on substantive answers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a deep dive into each department,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re taking a look at decisions we made, picks we\u2019ve made, development stuff that we\u2019ve done for different players. We have traded away a lot of picks and a few prospects along the way. We\u2019re excited with the ones that are here and that are playing for the Rangers now. I feel like we have a lot of good prospects that aren\u2019t in (AHL) Hartford, that are playing in college or junior or Europe. We\u2019ll continue to find ways to have all of them reach their potential.\u201d<\/p>\n Inside the Panarin trade<\/p>\n Drury didn\u2019t pinpoint a moment when he decided to trade Panarin, whom he labeled as \u201carguably the best free-agent signed in the 100-year history of the franchise.\u201d He painted it as a consequence of the mounting losses.<\/p>\n The Rangers are currently 22-28-6 after dropping 14 of 17 games since Christmas.<\/p>\n \u201cThe results certainly have a factor in it,\u201d Drury said. \u201cI talked to Artemi over the offseason, early on this season, halfway through this season. It became clear to us as an organization that the right thing to do is this retool, which is why we did the letter.\u201d<\/p>\n Once Drury made his intentions clear in a private meeting with Panarin on Jan. 16, the power shifted squarely to the player due to his NMC.<\/p>\n Panarin\u2019s agent, Paul Theofanous, spent the last few weeks working the phones. It fueled a unique situation that was akin to a free agent shopping around for a new club.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a long list of teams willing to talk to me about Artemi,\u201d Drury said.<\/p>\n Some, including the Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars and Tampa Bay Lightning, were believed to only have interest as a rental, while others such as the Carolina Hurricanes, Washington Capitals and Kings were better positioned to offer contract extensions (albeit at lesser total values than Panarin\u2019s camp initially hoped for).<\/p>\n Theofanous continued negotiations with multiple teams as the clock wound down, presumably in an attempt to leverage them against each other. In the end, while Panarin was intrigued by top contenders such as Dallas, Tampa and the two-time defending champion Florida Panthers, the extension piece was critically important to him.<\/p>\n The Kings were his preferred choice among the clubs with contract offers on the table, even though others went higher with their total value, according to a league source. Panarin\u2019s camp informed Drury \u201clate (Wednesday) morning\u201d that they would only accept a trade to L.A., but that came after days of talking to several interested clubs and weighing all options.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking for the first time since the start of New York Rangers training camp on Sept. 17, team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5111],"tags":[5,3328,35,5190,5193,4,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-446562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-rangers","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-rangers","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkrangers","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-rangers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116016668744876189","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}