The Rangers are not very good. Unlike last year, the issue isn’t effort. It’s roster construction. We knew heading into the season that the Rangers would be relying, perhaps a bit too much, on veterans while hoping some kids would make the roster. That backfired as the only kid to make the team wasn’t even many projected opening night lineups. With the roster in shambles and no cap space, is Chris Drury on the hot seat? If not, then at what point does his seat get warm?

Preseason hopes blew up in their face

When the Rangers signed Taylor Raddysh, re-signed Juuso Parssinen, and added Conor Sheary on a PTO, it was assumed all three would be stopgaps. The trio was to hold down bottom six spots until any or all of Gabe Perreault, Brett Berard, and Brennan Othmann were NHL ready. Berard and Othmann have struggled to start the season in Hartford and have not earned extended recalls. Perreault was fine, but injuries forced him to be returned to Hartford in the short term.

Only Noah Laba impressed enough to earn a spot on the roster, one he has been told he won’t lose this season. But without at least one more kid earning a spot and the mounting injuries, One of the stopgap players or Jonny Brodzinski has been forced into a top six role. Without Perreault, Will Cuylle is forced into a top line role that may not suit him at this point in his career. The forwards are completely imbalanced, even before we account for a snakebitten top six that would have trouble scoring.

On defense, perhaps the hope was Scott Morrow would make the team. He had a rough start to the season in Hartford and was only called up recently due to Will Borgen’s injury. Morrow has, uh, struggled to say the least. He’s not NHL ready. That means Carson Soucy, who has been improving (relatively) since his rough start and Urho Vaakanainen (who has been solid) get big minutes. Not exactly ideal.

So when is Chris Drury on the hot seat?

It’s tough to say if Drury is on the hot seat, or even if that will happen at all this year. Perhaps the plan this year was to simply be patient with the kids and we simply underestimated how long we would need to be patient. That’s fair, and we won’t know because Drury isn’t going to come out and essentially say they aren’t planning on competing this year.

There are other factors to consider before placing Drury on the hot seat. Is it his fault that the team is shooting 5%? That’s just bad luck. The counter argument is usually that the Rangers are boring, but that’s Mike Sullivan hockey. We said this on Live From the Blue Seats. Expect a lot of 3-2 games and snoozers. The only thing we didn’t anticipate was the Rangers being on the wrong end of so many of these games.

The prospects taking longer to develop is not entirely on Drury, and doesn’t put Drury on the hot seat, but perhaps waiting too long to trade Brennan Othmann is on him. That alone doesn’t put Drury on the hot seat, but it doesn’t help his cause.

What should put Drury on the hot seat is his overall body of work since he took over. He took a promising team filled with skill and dismantled it in favor of “grizzled veterans.” Almost every single one of those moves blew up in his face: Sammy Blais, Ryan Reaves, Barclay Goodrow, keeping Libor Hajek around, keeping Matthew Robertson around, allowing his coaches to mess with both Kaapo Kakko and Alexis Lafreniere. All of that is on him, and it should put Drury on the hot seat.

Unfortunately, all this is likely conjecture. James Dolan is the guy that made the front office change and put Drury in charge. He’s going to give Drury a long, long leash. Perhaps Dolan already knows this is a transition year as Drury continues to retool the Rangers in his vision.

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