Chris Drury Might Not Be Able To Save Himself

This New York Rangers season has gone beyond angry words.

The season is done midway through December. The Rangers currently reside outside of a playoff spot, they are 3-10 in their last 13 games, the locker room appears to be in an outright mutiny, the taskmaster veteran head coach who was brough in specifically to handle a locker room of leaders is at a loss, the fanbase is booing them off the ice, and the vibes are so far gone last year feels like it was a fever dream.

Is that everything? No, but it's most things. At least the main things.

Ironically enough, Chris Drury was right to be concerned about the New York Rangers when he threw the gauntlet down on the team earlier in the year. They were not playing good hockey – certainly not good enough to be any real threat to the Stanley Cup – and my guess is he knew something was wrong with the leadership in the room.

After Jacob Trouba was traded he essentially admitted that he had a difficult time coming back and being the captain when it was aired so publicly that he blocked a trade to be removed from New York. We discussed this at length on the podcast last week.

At the time I assumed Drury figured there wasn't enough fire in the room and there were hurt feelings over the summer's activity. Today I would assess that Drury actually knew Trouba let Goodrow's departure and his own situation seep into the room and wanted to cut it out before it went septic. Only it was way too late.

The problem, as I mentioned in my article on Drury's leak at the time, was that Drury needed to know how the room would handle him making things so public. The Rangers as an organization have never been in the public eye as much as they have been this year, and if Drury was going to air the dirty laundry there he needed to be sure the room would be able to handle it. Instead their downward spiral from that moment forward should be studied by the greatest statistical minds on the planet.

To me, the Rangers losing this much is a good thing in the big picture. For far too long this organization has tried to, in the immortal words of Taylor Swift, put band-aids over bullet holes. They go for the shiny new toy that doesn't really fit. They push out kids who they should be patient with. They bring in "locker room" players who aren't good at the hockey part of playing professional hockey. And for the past two decades, elite goaltending has bailed them out.

Only this time it isn't.

That is a good thing in the grand scheme of things because it's going to force actual change. The problem is when general managers feel that heat, think their job is on the line, and then go to the quick fix mentality that got the Rangers here in the first place. It is a very precise balance.

The biggest question for me is if Drury will even be given that chance.

Someone is responsible for this team's decay into whatever they have become. And yes, a bit of this falls on Laviolette – although I will continue to argue that his loss of the locker room had nothing to do with him or his coaching. That said, his decision to scratch Kakko in the loss to the Blues on Sunday and not allowing the kids to play with the net empty even though they dragged the team to that point in the game is a consistent issue. He's openly admitting in post-game pressers he doesn't have the answers. Players who aren't Kreider or Zibanejad are often trying to guess as to what's wrong. Lafreniere was outwardly emotional after the loss to the Blues. It's not good.

But this is not all on Laviolette. The Rangers are partially in this mess because of a series of miscues Drury has made – and not all of them are personnel moves. I have long said I agree that Drury is doing the right thing by being ruthless and not believing in this core. At the same time, I have questioned the way in which he has gone about these endeavors.

On the whole, I think Drury's work has been good. His contract extension work has been really good, and for the most part his trades (outside of that big one) have been fine to good. His work in free agency has been far above average, and I do think the Rangers have really drafted well once he got his feet up under him.

The issues seem to stem from how he deals with his players, which has been a long issue. Drury reportedly publicly exploded on Vitali Kravtsov after a practice before the Russian departed back to the KHL after being traded to Vancouver. Drury openly putting Trouba and Kreider on blast has backfired. He reportedly told Goodrow about his decision to waive him less than an hour before the news broke. I understand wanting to break up the friendship circle – and fully agree it was the right move – but if I'm going to lay blame at the feet of Trouba and the leadership in the room for letting things fall apart, I need to throw some blame at Drury for giving more fuel to the fire.

At the end of the day, there appears to be a tugging war between the brass and the players. The only problem is, both sides are wrong. Drury is not approaching the situation with any delicacy, and while the room falling apart over it is a sign he's right to do so, alienating the players isn't a good strategy.

On the other hand, the players have totally let the team down, with underperforming veterans not being held accountable by the coaching staff, leadership vanishing into thin air, and the toxicity of the team being mad that a core that had plenty of chances to win and didn't being broken up.

So two wrong sides pull at the rope. Will Drury have a chance to make chances before Jim Dolan decides he needs a fresh start?

We'll see.