The New York Rangers' Problem Is Clear: It's The Players

As the New York Rangers careen toward unmitigated disaster territory – if they aren't there already – they continue to be the talk of the hockey world.

Earlier in the week, Steve Glynn, better known to most of you as Steve Dangle, reported he had heard there was a players-only meeting to discuss Chris Drury and his approach to the season.

At the end of the piece Glynn says the "good news is the players still want to be Rangers."

Of course they do.

I tweeted this out earlier in the week as well, and I think it's fitting to note again here. There is historically, over the past 20 years, no better job than being an underperforming veteran on the New York Rangers. Coaches during this time don't hold them accountable, they make a life-changing amount of money, and they get to put their feet up and just play hockey. It's a trend that has followed the Rangers from the old Dark Ages in the late 1990's and early 2000's.

I have long said that Drury's approach has been something we haven't seen from this organization in the advent of the social media age. Publicity is not a typical New York Rangers avenue, and the leak to Friedman was as much of a bombshell of a leak as it was simply that it became public.

Glynn talks about how Jacob Trouba mentioning in his post-trade media appearances that being fired from MSG was looked at as a rite of passage speaks to the broader issues in the room. My visceral response to that is similar to what I said on the podcast last week, but I will condense it here: Trouba's complaints about his own situation and how Drury handled it would carry a lot more weight if he didn't admit in the very same interview that he allowed the summer negativity to seep into the room and that he basically stopped being a leader, while at the same time being one of the most expensive and underperforming players on the team.

I am done with this group, if you haven't been able to tell. I am done with this core. I am done with a group of veterans and "leaders" who have been given every single opportunity to succeed and be kept together by the very general manager they hate, pitching a fit that there were consequences to their actions this summer and now banding together to talk about how much they don't like being pushed. The Rangers of those pre-Jagr years of no playoffs were looked at as a country club organization. This group of players appear to want that outcome as well.

Too bad.

At every turn this team has withered under the spotlight.

Poor performances during the David Quinn years led to a major shakeup. How much player involvement there was is bringing that about we don't know for sure, but Quinn was looked at unfavorably by the players and they wanted a new voice. They got it, with Dolan firing John Davidson and Jeff Gordon and bringing in Drury, who subsequently fired Quinn and hired Gerard Gallant.

The team's failures to adjust under Gallant in both the series losses to Tampa Bay in the Eastern Conference Final and then the embarrassment the year after to New Jersey in the first round led to the players again begging Drury for a change. They needed structure and they needed accountability. So out went Gallant and in came Peter Laviolette.

And last year was a great, magical, fun ride ... until things got hard. And then what happened? The players withered again, this time at the hands of the Florida Panthers, oh so close to the Stanley Cup Final.

For the three years Drury has been in charge he has left this core and this friendship circle alone. He has nibbled at the outside edges of the roster, bringing in expensive rentals to try and push this core over the top. He has given Chris Kreider and specifically Mike Zibanejad damn near a dozen new players to play with on their line to get them going. He allowed Goodrow and Trouba to fall off the edge of the earth in terms of their actual hockey output in order to keep the leadership in the room together. He mortgaged the future to give this core chance after chance.

This summer, the bill finally came due. Goodrow was jettisoned to San Jose. The way it happened was dirty, but it's business. The Trouba situation this summer – exposed by a Larry Brooks article and then with heel turn over 18 hours that brought the entire thing truly public – was also dirty. But again, this is a business. Trouba forced his way off the Winnipeg Jets and onto the Rangers, and he forced his way into staying. Drury relented – not that he had much of a choice – and kept the friendship circle together for one more ride.

And then things got hard again this year. And the team wilted. Again.

So, to quote current (for how long, who knows) head coach Peter Laviolette from his Philadelphia Flyers days on HBO's 24/7, "Someone tell me what the fuck is the matter now? What's the difference now?"

The silence you hear from the room is because they don't have the answers either. Unless it's complaining about Chris Drury, pushing them to very simply care about the logo that runs across their chests seems impossible.

The general manager of a hockey team should not want to win more than the players in the room. And if the meeting did indeed happen as Glynn reported, it's a disgrace that the "leadership" decided the more important thing was not taking personal accountability but instead complaining that the general manager is too mean.

Grow up.

Drury has certainly been abrasive in the way he has handled the situation. I do not doubt that might ruffle feathers. I have also been of the mind that it was not the best strategy to go with, although I see the logic behind it and think he's right to be doing what he's doing. He doesn't get a full pass here by any stretch. Drury had to know the way he was going about things would melt this room, and went all in on a strategy that went bust. That, in and of itself, is a dual problem, but Drury should not have relented this summer into giving this core another shot. He should have known they weren't good enough and forced the issue. He could have went to the room before he went public. He could have tried the amicable route. Maybe he did and we don't know about it, but I doubt it. He hit the nuclear button and now we're here.

He has had to get creative with ways to sneak out of clauses either he or his predecessor put into contracts. Trouba can complain all he wants that he was threatened in order to leave, but if he wasn't the worst defenseman on the ice in the playoffs last year with the second highest cap hit then this wouldn't be an issue. And once Drury found out he was allowing the locker room to fester and grow toxic there was no other way around it, even if Trouba inexplicably claims there was.

Goodrow was an expensive luxury that on his best day (which happened to be in the playoffs last year) was still not worth the contract he signed. This is the deal when it comes to jobs, whether they pay $3.6 million or $36,000: You need to produce consistently. Goodrow didn't, and he didn't like the outcome. Too bad.

Something has to give. While the players have players-only meetings behind closed doors to talk about how mean their general manager is, they go out onto the ice and play listless hockey. And they lose. And lose. And lose. And lose. And lose. And lose. (Yes, each one of those links is different.) What exactly do they expect to have happen?

Meanwhile, Kaapo Kakko is speaking candidly to the media about how hard it is to be a healthy scratch when he thinks he's playing good hockey – and he's right. He also spoke about how he didn't think it was his job to try and communicate more with the coaches. And guess what? He's also right about that!

Laviolette responded that he's also held veterans accountable. Only the veterans he's talking about are Jimmy Vesey, Reilly Smith, and maybe Jonny Brodzinski, who has spent most of this year as the 13th forward.

When you have kids developing in a locker room, watching guys like Zibanejad not be held accountable for any of their actions, it's going to get to you. Kakko expressing his frustrations publicly is wild in a variety of ways, but I think it shows how much the room is fracturing. Or is totally fractured. Laviolette hasn't been at fault for a lot of the issues this year, but the way he's tried to coach himself out of trouble has shown his true colors. He still trusts a veteran group who give him nothing, while ignoring youth that actually gets results and plays like they give a shit.

The players can blame Drury all they want. That's an easy thing to do. The truth of the matter is the one thing the team can control is their effort. The one thing the team can do every single night is play like they give a shit. That should be an easy bar to clear, and is completely within their own hands.

That they have done none of that – with exception of Cuylle, Kakko, Lafreniere, Berard, and occasionally a select few others – speaks far more about the players than I think they realize.

This core wants more than another kick at the can. They want to not be pressured and just get paid to play hockey. No stakes, no repercussions. Drury has rejected that notion. And the team's response to him asking for more has been to go 3-11 in their past 14.

That is unacceptable. And the room thinking it's more important to talk about Drury than it is their own play just shows what they have become.

When the players mutinied against John Tortorella, that team gave a shit. They played hard in spite of him. They worked their asses off and had a quality product that was being held back by inferior coaching. That coup worked in part because the brass believed in the product on the ice enough to want to protect it.

If this team thinks this product is worth protecting, well, that's not surprising.

They've shown all year just how entitled they have really become.