The Rangers' Toxic Culture Is Chris Drury's Biggest Mess

The New York Rangers aren't just a mess on the ice. No. Not even close.

Sunday was another one of those very boring days that happen when your team isn't going to make the playoffs. You're not really expecting much of anything, and despite Vincent Trocheck telling the media the Rangers were playing for "pride" of all things, everyone is just waiting for the season to end.

Or at least it was supposed to be like that.

Entering the ice for practice, Calvin de Haan added his name to the list of players who feel they have been mistreated and wanted to say something about it to the media. Chip covered you all with it here, and if you have not had an opportunity to, please read this first. The gist of which is in the two embedded tweets below:

On the surface, any player speaking out about their current team during the season is something of a jarring event. It happens so very rarely in a sport where the athletes are the most boring of all those in North American professional sports.

But this isn't a one-off. This year de Haan, Kaapo Kakko, Jimmy Vesey and Zac Jones have all spoken out about their treatment during their time with the organization. And that doesn't even include Jacob Trouba, who had plenty to say right after he was traded to Anaheim.

To have it happen four times, with four different players, speaks to the bigger issues the Rangers been dealing with all year: The culture of this team, this room, and this brass is rotten.

I've long maintained that while I wish Chris Drury had a softer touch with the players—an issue that goes back further than his tenure as president and general manager of the team—he was right in his assessments of where this team was after the Eastern Conference Final loss to the Florida Panthers and who the problems were. The bigger issue, to me, was his refusal to cut ties when he knew the rot had already set in. Blinking in the stare down with Trouba this summer was the big one, but not firing Peter Laviolette in December when it was very clear he was not going to turn things around created an even bigger ripple effect.

I had removed Drury from my scathing reviews of the issues behind the scenes by giving him a pass that he's going to clean house this summer and fix it. But now? Now I'm not so sure.