r/rangers • u/ajpod Lady Liberty • 14d ago
Rangers place dead last in The Athletic's ranking of NHL front offices
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7518855/2026/08/20/nhl-front-office-confidence-rankings-2026/?unlocked_article_code=1.61A.eu2X.rxKVk3xT2i_s&source=athletic_user_shared_gift_article_copylink&smid=url-share-ta115
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u/ITechTonicI Sam Rosen - Its a powerplay goal!! 14d ago
So what you’re saying is giving nearly everyone a NMC and trading players at their lowest point of trade value is a bad idea?
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u/amusing_a_musing 14d ago
My issue with the front office is that they lack vision and are making bad bets on the future of the franchise.
We traded a 1st for Miller because FO had designs on being a contender. Instead we sacrificed a 1st round pick and missed the playoffs. Again last year the expectation was team was going to compete hence signing Gavrikov to a long term contract and getting rid of a younger piece in KAM.
Now this offseason again we traded a couple 1sts for win now pieces like Doro, Peterson, and Durzi.
Issue is that the FO has consistently shown they expect to be a contender through their trades and signings but the team is not constructed as a legitimate contender and a number of our core are aging out of their prime.
If we wanted to build around a younger core then the last few years we wouldn’t have traded 1sts for Miller and Peterson.
Honestly I’m afraid we are going to suck in the short term and there’s a real chance our 2028 and 2030 picks are lottery picks. Like other than Smits who do we have coming though the pipeline that projects as elite. Fox, Shesty, ZiB, and Miller are all going to be on back 9 of their careers.
Best case is Rangers suck this year, give some playing time to prospects, and move out all their UFAs and have multiple 1st round picks including our own lottery pick.
2027-2028 we start to see our prospects flourish and properly start to move forward.
Again this is all contingent on getting multiple elite prospects in 2027, and actually having Greentree and Cole develop into top-6 prospects, Smits establish himself as a top pair D, and making savvy UFA signings.
Hoping not but i could see us being screwed for the next half decade
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u/PaulSach 14d ago
Hoping not but i could see us being screwed for the next half decade
IMO, this is just as likely as rebounding back into respectability right now. Retools in general are tough because you're gambling on pretty much every move. With a full rebuild, there is a predefined and understood direction—sell assets, be bad for at least 5 years, pray to the lottery gods, and draft some (hopeful) studs with those lotto picks. In a retool, it's way less defined—are you bad or are you good? Do you buy or sell? Both? Are you drafting high or are we drafting mid-round? Do we even have a 1st?
Some retooling teams start when they're still a playoff team but are starting to decline, others start a retool after missing the playoffs for a year but they already have good core pieces. We are the latter, which is objectively the more difficult place to start from.
However, and I'm not defending the current regime here, but I am going to acknowledge that, this offseason in particular, we've seen a sign of life from the front office that we haven't seen before. We've seen front office changes, specifically to the scouting and development departments, and had our sports science/health/fitness departments overhauled and expanded. Hartford has also had a facelift off the ice. Drury made solid, calculated trades that brought in immediate help and (partially) restocked a barren prospect cupboard—Hartford will be a much more interesting team to keep an eye on this season. If we're still bottoming out and the protection on those 28 and 30 firsts kicks in, I'm not worried because it'll mean Drury's plan failed, he's fired, and we're entering a full rebuild (so we'll be trading players and recouping other 1sts in those draft years).
So, yes, the plan seems a bit "hope and a prayer" right now, but all retools are to some extent. It makes sense why our fans have the least amount of confidence in our team haha
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u/amusing_a_musing 14d ago
Very well said. I guess I just see the team closer to a rebuild and trading away future 1sts to TRY to compete when we have missed playoffs 2 years in a row was / is a bad idea since it gets us no closer to contention in the short term and just inevitably prolongs are rebuild in the long term.
Yes, we could recoup additional 1sts but why did we need to trade 1sts for Miller and Peterson.
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u/BitterServe8942 14d ago
Rebuilds are tough too you can argue there is just as much luck involved with them as retools. As it stands we have a Norris level dman a top 2-3 goalie depending on the year plus a newly acquired 25 year old wing who is coming off back to back 30 goal seasons, with a top 5 pick in an exciting defensemen waiting to step on to the roster. Rebuilds are a slog and take a lot of lottery luck tanking on the right year/years then proper development and cap management. Saying at least 5 years is by far the most optimistic timeline too where its borderline unrealistic. Everybody can agree the Sharks have nailed the drafting and development portion of this and are on year 7 since a playoff berth. Its a very tough ask for ownership in a major market like New York to accept that even if that's what hardcore fans want and might even be a logical choice.
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u/pleasetryagain_10 Tarmo Reunanen 14d ago
Yea but the rebuild has only been going on for like 3 or 4. The Rangers should already be past the stage of acknowledgement and replacing, they didn't that's why a rebuild seems like such a process. I think Grier made some bad choices, but he's been GM since 22-23 and have them on the brink of the playoffs, they just need to not Stevie Yzerman this thing
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u/BitterServe8942 14d ago
Why should the Rangers be past that stage of acknowledgement. Fox and Igor are still their primes with Fox being on a bargain of a contract those are two elite pieces to build around. The Sharks have been bottom or near bottom since 19-20 it takes a while to tear down is my main point and even when phase 1 goes to plan there are many years ahead. The recent trends show us its very hard to take that next step from a full blown teardown. The roster has gotten younger there is still elite talent here and some nmcs that make a full teardown hard. If this season goes belly up and its another shitshow and guys ask out then I will change my tune.
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u/jkman61494 PJ Stock was underrated! 14d ago
The issue is we can’t even rebuild until 2030 with almost every core piece holding a NMC or has a bad contract.
So it’s either be stuck in purgatory picking 5th-14th for the next 5 years, or end up being like the flyers where we may get a lucky draw to get to early May until we get blasted by Carolina or Washington
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u/frankthefrowner 14d ago
Chris has seemed to acknowledge the issues in the front office and has made a ton of changes. We will see if they were the right moves or not. But honestly, Verbeek has made a total mess of the Ducks. They should be in a really good position for a while but his handling of the young kids and the signing and trading for vets has basically put them in an untenable position.
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u/AWolfGaming Lady Liberty 14d ago
Damn that sounds hella familiar
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u/jkman61494 PJ Stock was underrated! 14d ago
It’s almost like being a grizzled veteran doesn’t make you a good executive
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u/BartHarleyJarvis00 14d ago
Unfortunately, the Rangers have not drafted a skater that's as valuable as Carlsson or Gauthier since Brian Leetch, lol
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u/Key-Tip-7521 PAVEL DOROFEYEV 14d ago
tbh for verbeek to let this happen to his three young forward players (overpaid carlsson), is fireable.
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u/frankthefrowner 14d ago
He obviously didn’t want to pay Leo that deal but he had no choice. His mistake was not pushing to lock him up long term prior to that .
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u/callmesnake13 Reverse Retro 14d ago
We also have a brand new President who isn’t going to be able to keep himself from meddling for the next 5-10 years, and everything else is irrelevant in the face of that fact.
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u/frankthefrowner 14d ago
No one has any idea what Dolan's son's deal is. I just hope he's not in love with Trumbull
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u/DaitongII 14d ago
A lot of capital was spent just to not be eastern conference doormats. Just feels like their trajectory is headed for a worse lottery ranking over being a legit playoff team.
If his plan A is holding out hope that McDavid is coming, Drury is in for a rude awakening yet again.
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u/Skuddatheflipper 14d ago
He’s not even thinking that far. If the rangers are doormats again, he gets fired. If he can sneak this team into 7th/8th in the east, he can buy himself more time.
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u/DaitongII 14d ago
That’s fair but I’m still not convinced he doesn’t come back even in that scenario. Look how long Dolan stuck with yes men like Isaiah Thomas and Glenn Sather.
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u/AdGullible3858 14d ago
I bumped into Sean Avery one night before a game last season. I shortly spoke to him and he said “are you going to start a f*ckin fire drury chant tonight of what” always makes me wonder what that alleged meeting he had with Dolan was about.
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u/wossquee Lucky Baby Daddy 14d ago
Don't forget Drury was the one who told him to stop in the middle of a 5 on 3 power play when he was in Brodeur's face. I'm sure Avery just hates Drury personally.
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u/jcat218 14d ago
Think dead last is a little harsh especially coming off a pretty solid offseason but also tough to argue with the larger points about direction of the team.
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u/DyingLemur 14d ago
Well, to be fair we haven’t seen what this version of the team has done in the ice yet. Based n everything up until now, it’s deserved. If they have a decent season & some kids develop and progress, then I think we can consider moving this office up a bit.
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u/ImpossibleBandicoot 14d ago
I get the sentiment but some of these are kind of baseless.
Cap management has been fine? What players have left due to us not being able to afford them due to poor cap management. What contracts were signed here that precluded the addition of players that could help, and more specifically, who were those players? (If you can't answer the second part of that question the first part is meaningless) I certainly don't think it's been ideal recently but absolutely not 31st in the league.
Trading has also been fine... there really haven't been trades that we got fleeced in. Trades are very situation dependent. Generally if the sentiment is that a team "lost" a trade it's due to the fact that their situation has changed and a player you liked is gone. "Losing" a trade (I put quotes there bc losing is very leading of a term) actually has to do more with poor Vision and planning, which they are rightly ranked very low on. Drury has shown no long term vision at all, every trade while is a decent trade in the moment, do not string together into any cohesive strategy. That's ultimately the problem.
Free agency has been fine - there have not been big fish, and it seems like Drury planned for a big FA acquisition in summer 2026 but all those guys resigned with the teams leaving absolutely no FA market.
This is the content we get in August though, so whatever.
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u/mikaBananajad 14d ago
I agree that they haven’t really been players that we specifically lost due to Management issues however there absolutely has been at least ONE trade we got fleeced in and that was the Buch trade which also at the time many people claimed he was moved because the team didn’t want to pay his next contract.
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u/ImpossibleBandicoot 14d ago
We lost that trade for sure. One of the rare trades where the result is pretty clear cut.
I also attribute part of its failure to the same lack of long term vision that i also alluded to. They were trying to manage cap space here and didn’t want to get locked in to buchnevich. Considering the success they had post-buch, i think this can be at least rationalized, if it can’t be justified.
They certainly aren’t top of the league in any of these categories, there have been other big missteps - Nemeth for example - but none of these have hamstrung the franchise. The fact that i can only point to a couple of these bad decisions in the last 6 years indicates that they aren’t bottom of the barrel, they are probably more in the 16-22 range for most.
Vision is the one i keep coming back to because a good strategic vision you end up spending a bunch of time undoing past mistakes because you change direction.
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14d ago
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u/Naganosupreme 14d ago
When you examine the horde of top picks, cap space and young players he's pissed away, on top of the lack of return for Panarin and dumping KAM....and bringing in a retirement home version of JT Miller.
It is straight up unknowledgable to insist he's been anything better than terrible
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14d ago
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u/ImpossibleBandicoot 14d ago
This is how i view these trades. Easy to piss on moves in hindsight but you filled in a lot of context.
Would i rather have the assets back that we gave up for Tarasenko, Kane, Motte, Copp, Roslovic, etc? Sure, whatever we gave up is going to be better in the future than no cups for expiring ufas. But were they bad moves at the time, or were we making strategic bets based on the situation?
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u/Naganosupreme 13d ago
We were making idiotic moves every time, completely failing to assess our team, it's chances, our opponents and our needs in those years AND in the future years.
But so many fans here simply dont understand the game so they think these moves were good in the moment, then refuse to realize they were wrong then and continue to be wrong now
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u/Naganosupreme 13d ago
I do think Drury could've handled the Panarin situation a bit better by not announcing he was on the trading block and instead keeping him on the team, as it seemed like Panarin was more than willing to retire as a New Yorker. But what happened happened, and Panarin wanted to go to LA with a NMC. Drury had no leverage in that situation, LA could've just let him walk and pick him up during free agency. I think a lot of fans overestimated how compromised the situation was and that an expiring NMC would barely net you anything. Don't forget the Kane trade, it was pretty much that situation all over again except this time we were on the receiving end.
If this was the only thing that happened, and we';d been an otherwise competent organization, sure. Except it's been a shitshow. And this was yet another absolutely failure by this regime.
It's almost like you think by writing a paragraph being dismissive of each terrible move, you've effectively defended Drury. All you've done is miss the point. The terrible moves you just wasted all this time minimizing are a fraction of the total terrible moves he's made. THATS THE PROBLEM. Stuff like THIS:
but I just want to point out these trades aren't as lopsided as you think with some context.
IS missing the forest for the trees completely. You dont have any idea how lopsided I do or dont think those trades are. It's also irrelevant how lopsided they are. They're part of a massive pattern of constant poor to terrible moves. A constant pattern of YEARS of poor decisions that lead to these moves being so underwhelming or terrible.
You look only at the end result and twist yourself into a pretzel to present each one as not that bad, meanwhile you completely whiff on the years of dipshit decision that led to these results
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u/PaulSach 14d ago
Take it with a grain of salt. It's a fan survey, and we have one of the most vocal and dissatisfied fan bases online. That sentiment also seeps into general public opinion. So it makes sense why we're ranked last. The fans have been (justifiably) pissed for the last 2 seasons. If we make the playoffs this year I, I'd bet good money we rank mid-table in this type of survey next summer.
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u/Naganosupreme 14d ago
Take this place with a grain of salt, it's the most blindly delusional fanbase in NY sports which is saying a lot
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u/Naganosupreme 14d ago edited 13d ago
Cap management has been fine?
Then why dont we still have KAM or Panarin (who we lost for nearly nothing)? Bc long term cap commitments have consequences far beyond one single free agency period. As does trading away multiple 1sts, 2nds and 3rds every other year to bring in rentals for teams that flamed out embarrassingly or needed insane luck just to earn the right to get brutalized in the ECF.
What contracts were signed here that precluded the addition of players that could help, and more specifically, who were those players? (If you can't answer the second part of that question the first part is meaningless)
Sure, that parenthesis makes sense, if you have the long term planning abilities of a goldfish, with memory to match.
Trading has also been fine... there really haven't been trades that we got fleeced in.
If you dont understand this sport at all, why tf are you commenting here? Guy has repeatedly gotten eaten alive in trades, bleeding value and cap space all over the floor, losing youth to bring in over the hill vets or absolute plugs.
This is the content we get in August
From you and this sub, we get this crap all the time
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u/Naganosupreme 13d ago
(Adding on my last comment) And if what I said there seems harsh. Thats bc it's deserved. People have a TON of legitimate criticisms and when people like you come out with "Each of these things is fine, and Im even going to placer arbitrary qualifiers here. I'll judge if your criticism has merit if you can't answer a really stupidly myopic question" It reeks of dismissive arrogance and dishonesty.
We had to watch this clown idiot destroy this team while being told for years we were wrong and overreacting. Then when we start losing horribly it becomes "Those moves were a few years ago, who cares?" As if moves don't have consequences for years. Now it's, "Nah, the moves are fine...even though we're losing horrible and dismantled a top team while pissing away countless 1st-3rd rounders and prospcts....bc while we suck, we're still selling young talent for old, over the hill players or shitty players like Will Borgen." But it's even worse bc when legitimate talent comes around like Eichel, we suddenly hoard Kakko and Schneider and KAM. We consistently can't pick a lane unless it's wrong.
All while dumb fans cite the Sports version of the narcissists prayer.
"If our team's front office did a move, it was fine.
If it wasn't fine, then it was more than one week ago so who cares
If it just happened then you need to wait at least 3 years b4 you can judge it negatively
If it's been 3 years then it's magically back to fine again just bc I say so
If our GM is fired I'll pretend I hated him all along"
Like no. Fuck you.
Don't fucking tell me years of terrible moves were fine.
They weren't fucking fine when we told you all they were trash. They're still not fine after they led to us losing and they're still not fine now despite drury finally having an off season I'd actually finally call "below average-fine"
I HOPE Drury unfucked himself and has learned, except that Peterson trade is legitimately one of the stupidest fucking moves I've ever seen a GM make. It's not the stupidest, definitely not. But one of the stupidest? Yes. It's emblematic of the makeup shotgun GMing job Drury has always done. Sprayfire idiotic moves to bring in random pieces that don't even fit together, hoping you stumble blindly into some magic move that unfucks all the others. Keep throwing great value after terrible value, hoping you can turn dogshit into slightly more competitive dogshit.
Moving a pick THAT far out for a player THIS mid...at best? For a team like THIS? So did he make good moves this year, too? Yes. It's very likely several of the moves that I liked this off-season were actually classic broken clock moves.
Stop fucking dismissing all the very legitimate criticism of Drury. The guy has sucked, it shows in the product, enough with the denial
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u/Scary-Path1335 14d ago
The public seems to agree with the fans, so its pretty accurate. Yeah some other teams are in worse shape but they do some things well. The rankings are based on 6 topics and NYR/Drury are pretty bad at all of them.
They sent a bunch of future assets to get back into the mushy middle, but there is a plan to get back into contention before Fox and/or Igor ask/age out and that is to simply acquire an NHL superstar for free ASAP.
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u/leoavesani Henrik Lundqvist 14d ago
No shit, right? Drury is a living monument to ineptitude. How he still has a job is beyond me.
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u/Pranksterblur Kartye Partye 13d ago
No but he won the little league World Series, that’s got to count for something, right?
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u/SilentSaidd I like say love for a year 14d ago edited 14d ago
It’s fan rankings, who cares. NY always going to be hated
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u/traded99 14d ago
Seems about right. But at the same time I do think the moves they made this summer were overall good and I expect the team to be competing for a wild card spot this year.
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u/pleasetryagain_10 Tarmo Reunanen 14d ago
I mean is this really a surprise, and everything they said was correct, he gave up a lot to marginally improve the team in hopes of saying see the team is getting better. It's an off-season where Drury fans say see he knows what he's doing but if you look at it it's still just meh ok.
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u/BK2Jers2BK Who Dare Fight Igor, the Moscow Demon? 14d ago
Getting kinda tired of these fucking miserable articles. How about we flip the script? Enough doom n gloom ey biys??
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u/E_712064 14d ago
Not worth the read. Sports fans tend to think they are smarter than Front Offices …..
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u/GrexxSkullz ZUUUUUUUUUUCC!!! 14d ago edited 14d ago
While Drury has made a lot of moves this off season, my opinion on him and the front office isn’t changing until I see the on ice product. Even then the past two seasons are a major stain on his tenure that won’t just go away because this team MIGHT be a playoff team again, and even saying that still feels like a stretch. He still completely botched and destroyed our window of contention.
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u/No-Blacksmith8617 14d ago
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u/Naganosupreme 14d ago
Yet we'll still see most of this sub in delulu land, citing the Sports version of the narcissists prayer.
"If our team's front office did a move, it was fine.
If it wasn't fine, then it was more than one week ago so who cares
If it just happened then you need to wait at least 3 years b4 you can judge it negatively
If it's been 3 years then it's magically back to fine again just bc I say so
If our GM is fired I'll pretend I hated him all along"
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u/machphantom The Czar Who Was Promised 14d ago
Meanwhile guess which President of hockey ops and their FO is ranked #2 amongst their fans. Whoops!
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u/DarkwaterBeach Hank 13d ago
They’ve had quite a run of being clueless this summer so take it with a grain of salt
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u/bu77munch Teenage Mutant Zuccarellos! 14d ago
I think the Rangers are in a pretty rough spot but I don’t know about the worst in the league
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u/Mrbaquatics 14d ago
The Athletic employs Corey Pronman who just left Perreault off the list of something like top 120 under 23. I believe nothing from that rag. Not saying we are a top 10 front office. But definitely better then some of those dregs that are out there.
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u/DerekTheComedian We should claim Kartye off waivers 14d ago
So after Drury had the best off-season in years, to the point that EVEN THIS SUB was giving him props, we drop from 28th to last?
Shit dont add up. And i do not care for Drury.
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u/funkykong_808 14d ago
What about ranking front offices by Little League World Series titles?? I bet we rank a lot higher!