When manager Chris Drury spoke for the first time since the Rangers’ season ended on Friday, he didn’t sound pleased with the franchise’s best regular season in franchise history and its second trip to the conference finals in three years.
He didn’t seem like someone who was going to commit to leading the same team again after failing to win another championship.
“We’re looking at a lot of different things,” Rangers general manager Drury said on a Zoom media call, “and there’s a lot of different ways to get to where we want to be. To me, nothing’s really off the table.”
“We’re trying to get better. Like I said, we’re trying to get to the ultimate goal here. We’re in the middle of that process right now, trying to figure out what to do next, what we can do to get better.”
This early in the offseason, it’s impossible to know exactly how things will play out, as Drury has no shortage of options to make changes to his team.
The Rangers have several players who will become free agents, but outside of Ryan Lindgren and perhaps Braden Schneider, who no one expects to leave after a big postseason run, they are not considered core members of the team’s foundation.
The team could potentially release Kaapo Caco as a restricted free agent, but it’s hard to see that as a massive change considering Caco played as a third-line winger in the playoffs and missed Game 2 of the conference finals due to health reasons.
With Jacob Trouba, Chris Kreider and Mika Zibandeg struggling in the conference finals, it’s not out of the question that the Rangers could consider moving a captain, a top-line center or one of the team’s longest-tenured players — and any of those three would be big moves.
But there are potential obstacles to any of these scenarios, namely salaries, no-deal clauses and the fact that the Rangers would likely be better off with these players than without them.
Assuming Kreider and Zibanejad return next year, the obvious focus this offseason will be finding a permanent right winger for the BFF, who have not been able to permanently bond with anyone since Pavel Buchnevich was traded prior to the 2021-22 season.
“We’re looking at a variety of options,” Drury said, “some internal, some external, some through trades and free agency. To me, Micah and Chris are great players. They’re the only two that can carry the line. We’re going to continue to look and try to find the right fit for them.”
Another letterman, Barclay Goodrow, is a name that could come up in rumors this summer given the team would need to move some money to re-sign Lindegren, although Lindegren has a modified 15-team no-trade clause.
The move won’t be easy given cap restrictions and the fact that the Rangers have already traded eight of their 21 draft picks through 2026, though they still hold first-round picks in each of the next three drafts.
CapFriendly has the Rangers offering $11.3 million in spending money this summer, but that doesn’t take into account dealing with eight players with expiring contracts or the need to extend the contracts of Igor Shesterkin, Alexis Lafreniere and Qu’Andre Miller.
Drury wouldn’t offer up specifics — and it’s likely there’s still work to be done to hammer out a plan moving forward less than a week after the loss — but it was indicative that he characterized his belief as being in individual players, rather than the entire 23-man roster.
“I have faith in my players as individuals,” he said. “We have a lot of really good players here. A lot of players have had great seasons and some of them have been really good players for the Rangers for a long time. The job now is to figure out if this group, as a whole, can get to where we want to be. That process is already underway and will continue through the offseason. As I often say, we’re always looking at how we can get better and trying to move forward to reach our end goal.”
