It’s a little strange, isn’t it? Three years after Chris Drury came in as general manager with one of his chief mandates being to make the team bigger, stronger and tougher, the Rangers enter the 2024-25 season with one of the biggest questions being whether they are big enough, strong enough and tough enough.
That is not, for the record, a knock on Drury — or at least it’s not meant to eclipse a very strong record he’s put together over the past three seasons.
It is no accident that since he’s taken over, the Rangers have climbed out of a rebuilding phase and into Stanley Cup contention, on a relatively straight path no less. There are no shortage of factors that went into the Rangers blossoming into one of the league’s best few teams and Presidents’ Trophy winners, and Drury’s management was one of them.
So yes, we are doing some nitpicking here, because the Rangers are now at a level where — barring disaster — the questions about the regular season have more to do with how they will win than with whether they will win, and nothing can be called a success until the next 82 games pass and then some.
