When will Chris Drury be in the hot seat?

The Rangers aren’t that good. Unlike last year, it is not about effort. It’s lattice construction. We knew going into the season that the Rangers would rely, perhaps a little too much, on veterans while hoping some kids would make the roster. That backfired because the only kid who made the team wasn’t even much of an expected opening night lineup. With the roster in shambles and no cap space, is Chris Drury in the right place? If not, at what point does his seat get warm?

Preseason hopes blew up in their faces

When the Rangers signed Taylor Raddysh, re-signed Juuso Parssinen and added Conor Sheary to a PTO, it was assumed that all three would be a stopgap. The trio had to hold the bottom six spots until Gabe Perreault, Brett Berard and Brennan Othmann were partially or fully ready for the NHL. Berard and Othmann have struggled to start the season in Hartford and have not earned extensive recalls. Perreault was doing fine, but injuries forced him to return to Hartford on short notice.

Only Noah Laba impressed enough to earn a roster spot, a spot he has been told he won’t lose this season. But without at least one more kid earning a spot and injuries piling up, one of the emergency players, aka Jonny Brodzinski, has found himself thrust into a top-six role. Without Perreault, Will Cuylle will be forced into a top role that may not suit him at this point in his career. The attackers are completely out of balance, even before we can take into account a snake-bitten top six that would have difficulty scoring.

On defense, perhaps the hope was that Scott Morrow would make the team. He had a rough start to the season in Hartford and was only recently called up due to Will Borgen’s injury. Morrow has, uh, was struggling to say the least. He’s not ready for the NHL. That means Carson Soucy, who has improved (relatively) since his rocky start, and Urho Veelanainen (who has been solid) will get big minutes. Not exactly ideal.

So when will Chris Drury be on the hot seat?

It’s hard to say if Drury is in the right spot, or even if that will happen at all this year. Maybe the plan this year was to just be patient with the kids and we simply underestimated how long we would have to be patient. That’s fair, and we won’t know because Drury won’t come out and essentially say they don’t plan to compete this year.

There are other factors to consider before putting Drury on the hot seat. Is it his fault the team is shooting 5%? That’s just bad luck. The counterargument is usually that the Rangers are boring, but that’s Mike Sullivan hockey. We said this on Live From the Blue Seats. Expect lots of 3-2 games and snoozers. The one thing we didn’t expect was that Rangers were on the wrong side of so many of these games.

The development of the prospects isn’t entirely Drury-related, and doesn’t put Drury first, but perhaps Brennan Othmann’s delay in taking action is his fault. That alone doesn’t put Drury first, but it doesn’t help his case.

What should put Drury on the hot seat is his overall body of work since he took over. He took a promising team full of skills and dismantled it in favor of ‘grey veterans’. Nearly all of those moves blew up in his face: keeping Sammy Blais, Ryan Reaves, Barclay Goodrow, Libor Hajek around, keeping Matthew Robertson around, allowing his coaches to mess with both Kaapo Kakko and Alexis Lafreniere. That’s all on him, and it should put Drury on the hot seat.

Unfortunately, this is all probably conjecture. James Dolan is the man who made the front office change and put Drury in charge. He’s going to give Drury a long, long leash. Perhaps Dolan already knows this is a transition year as Drury continues to adapt the Rangers to his vision.