Chris Drury appears ready for Rangers shakeup this offseason: ‘Nothing’s off the table’
When Chris Drury spoke Friday for the first time since the Rangers’ season ended, he did not sound like someone content with the best regular season in franchise history and a second Eastern Conference final berth in three years.
He did not sound like someone ready to commit to running it back with the same group that again came up short of a championship.
“We’re looking at a lot of different things,” Drury, the Rangers’ general manager, said on a Zoom call with media. “And there’s different ways to get to where we want to go. To me, really, nothing’s off the table.
“We’re trying to be better. We’re trying, as I said, to reach the ultimate goal here. In the middle of that process now and trying to figure out what’s next and what can we do to be better.”
At this early stage of the offseason, it is impossible to know exactly how things will play out, because there is no shortage of options for Drury to shake up the roster.
The Rangers have a number of players entering free agency, but outside of Ryan Lindgren and perhaps Braden Schneider — who nobody expects to leave following a breakout postseason — none are considered core pieces of the foundation.
Letting Kaapo Kakko go as a restricted free agent appears to be a possibility, but given Kakko’s playoff status as a third-line winger and Game 2 healthy scratch in the conference final, it would be hard to view that as a massive shakeup.
