2024-2025 Chris Drury report card

Wrapping up our 2024-2025 report cards is Chris Drury and the Rangers front office. To put it mildly, many of the Rangers issues last year started with Drury’s summer roster management, which he tried to rectify with a flurry of midseason trades. As such, his report card grade is a tale of two Drury’s. The first where he created his own headaches, and the second where he tried to rectify those headaches. It was kind of like putting your hand on a hot pan and then treating the burns after.

There’s no point in re-hashing every single thing done by Drury last season, we all know the moves. To instead, let’s break it down into the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good

It’s easy to say that Chris Drury did nothing good last season, but getting out of that Jacob Trouba contract was a big win. Even if the approach was flawed, which we all know what happened by now, he was able to trade a severely declining player with a monster contract without retaining salary and still managed to get a useful piece or two. That’s a major win for Drury.

For the most part, Drury handled the trade deadline pretty well too. Despite being just a couple points from a playoff spot, Drury recognized the need to sell and did not try to load up for a miracle run. Landing a pair of picks for both Ryan Lindgren and Jimmy Vesey was solid, as was landing a third round pick for Reilly Smith.

Not directly part of the trade deadline was the acquisition of JT Miller. This was probably the highlight of Chris Drury’s 2024-2025 season, as the Rangers landed Miller for Filip Chytil, Victor Mancini, and a 1st round pick. This was less of a trade deadline move and more of a retooling move, Miller has already been named captain and will be the team’s new first line center.

The good for Drury was very good.

The bad

It’s hard to differentiate between the bad and the ugly, especially since it all merged together. Trading for Carson Soucy, moving the third round pick they acquired for Reilly Smith, was a questionable move at best. Soucy looked bad last season with the Rangers, but so did everyone. We may look at this trade differently after this season, though.

Along the same lines, trading Kaapo Kakko for pennies on the dollar was pretty rough too. Kakko was going to get moved, we all know that, but it seems as if Drury didn’t even test the market and take the best available package. He wanted Will Borgen and appeared to get tunnel vision on him.

Most of Chris Drury’s 2024-2025 season was either good or ugly, with very little in between.

The ugly was really ugly

As mentioned above, most of the Rangers issues started with how Chris Drury managed the offseason. The Trouba drama was unnecessary and could have been avoided. That entire situation led to almost everything else we saw that tanked last season for the Blueshirts. From the offseason drama to the lame duck captain to the offseason BBQ mutiny, it all started with how Trouba was managed in the offseason.

No good deed goes unpunished, so it’s worth noting Drury did attempt to work with Trouba by finding a trade spot for him in the offseason. Trouba exercised is contractually given right to refuse a trade, which was again fine. The issue was timing. Drury was itching to get Trouba moved and asked for his no-trade list before the July 1 deadline, thus giving Drury and his team a chance to alter their list to force his stay in New York. This whole situation snowballed and was the defining ugly moment of the season.

Related to the Trouba drama was that very silly trade memo Drury released, naming both Trouba and Chris Kreider as available. That was ill timed at best, and just an overall poor choice. This is the team’s captain and its longest tenure player. You don’t publicly put them on blast.

Everything from last season stemmed from Chris Drury’s horrible personnel management.

2024-2025 Chris Drury report card grade: D- (Trouba trade saved him)