Another Bottom Six Signing By Drury

Rangers fans and Mets fans both have something in common. No matter how many times they get their hearts broken, they still come back for more. Despite missing the playoffs two years in a row, the Garden faithful remain eternally hopeful for this upcoming season. 

To be clear, Chris Drury has not had a bad offseason. The moves he's made have improved the roster. And Eeli Tolvanen is a good bottom six forward, that at $1.5 million, is a solid signing. But he's still another bottom six forward on a team that has more bottom six forwards than it knows what to do with. Tolvanen, Will Cuylle, Noah Laba, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Taylor Raddysh, Tye Kartye, Joseph Valeno, Adam Sykora, Jaroslav Chmelar, and Matt Rempe.

The top six is another matter. After Mika Zibanaejad, J.T. Miller, Pavel Dorofeyev, Alexis Lafreniere and Gabe Perrault, the pickings are a little slim. And keep in mind, Perrault in the top six is not exactly a slam dunk. Given this franchise's track record with past first rounders, I wouldn't put it past Mike Sullivan to relegate him to the bottom six if he gets off to a slow start. 

The point is for a team that wasn't exactly loaded with elite-level talent to begin with, Drury didn't really move the needle much. True, the defensive pairings are better, but the Rangers enter the 2026-27 season with two aging centers on contracts that, for all intents and purposes, are unmovable. Even the most optimistic outlook for this team has them as a Wild Card. When you compare the job Drury has done with the Rangers with the job Leon Rose has done with the Knicks, it's almost laughable. 

Two months ago, after Drury's free agent signings, I asked a very simple question. 

"What's the plan? Is this the start of another three-year window followed by consecutive seasons without making the playoffs? How many more times do we have to ride this sick roller coaster? That's the biggest problem I have with Drury. He keeps making the same mistakes over and over again. Name one time when he didn't take a short cut. From the moment he got the job, he's seemed more interested in keeping it than doing the hard work required to win a championship."

Instead of doing a rebuild, which is what was called for, Drury elected to do yet another retool. As a result, even with all the moves he's made, this team still isn't as good as the ones that went to the conference finals in 2022 and '24. Assuming they do make it to the playoffs - and that's a big assumption - they're far more likely to suffer a quick exit than go on a deep run. With the exception of the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs, there's not one team in the East that isn't in better shape than the Rangers personnel wise, and that includes the hated Islanders.

With Quintin Dolan taking over day-to-day operations of the organization, it remains to be seen whether he will be as patient as his father. If I were Drury, I wouldn't bet the ranch on it.