Rangers suit Chris Drury still plays part of savvy captain

GREENBURGH, N.Y. — The seeds of Chris Drury, president and general manager, were sown during his NHL playing days, certainly during his time as Rangers captain.

He could be personable and available to the media and, even toward the end, when he was playing on the fourth line, he always sat at his locker stall after the game making sure any reporter that needed a quote from the captain got one. Yet it was plainly obvious Drury valued the sanctity of the team’s structure and its secrets above all else.

So it was no surprise that Drury on Tuesday, during his NHL-mandated media session prior to Wednesday night’s Game 1 of the Eastern Conference final against the two-time defending Stanley Cup-champion Lightning at Madison Square Garden, gave fair answers on the Rangers’ success thus far without making any revelatory statements or providing a headline-inducing quote. (To which this non-surprised columnist thought: “Drat. Oh, well.”)

“As we said when the season started, we wanted to have a great regular season, we wanted to do everything we could to get in the playoffs,” said Drury when asked whether he always believed the Rangers could reach the NHL final four.

“Our mantra was, ‘When you get in, anything can happen.’ We’re certainly excited to be one of four teams left and we’re just going to keep grinding as best we can.”

It’s fair to say not many projected the Rangers to reach the conference final this season, their first full one since Drury took over for the fired tandem of John Davidson and Jeff Gorton. Other than being swept by the Hurricanes in the best-of-five qualifying round in the Toronto bubble in 2020 – which simply does not meet the standards of playing playoff hockey – the Rangers had not been to the postseason since 2017.

Drury praised the group’s resiliency – the Rangers rallied from a 3-1 series deficit in the first round against the Penguins and are 5-0 in elimination games – their tight-knit room and how the younger players have succeeded while gaining playoff experience.

“There certainly has been no quit throughout the season,” Drury said. “You battle through different things, up and down, during the year and you find different ways to win and we certainly did that throughout the season and in both series to be able to come back and win some big games on the road. A resilient bunch that really has had no quit since Day 1.”

Davidson and Gorton by no means left the cupboard bare and this is not to re-litigate whether the Rangers would have also taken this step under their stewardship. Drury brought in physical forwards Barclay Goodrow and Ryan Reaves in the offseason and acquiring forwards Frank Vatrano, Andrew Copp and Tyler Motte plus defenseman Justin Braun to bolster the lineup at the trade deadline.

“They’ve all contributed,” Drury said as he sat at the podium at MSG Training Center next to Gallant. “I thought our scouts and our staff did a great job of identifying those guys as targets and we were fortunate enough to be able pull off the deals to get them.”

Drury did draw laughs when he recalled how he went around the Rangers’ room following their 6-2 win over the Hurricanes in Monday night’s Game 7 of that second-round series in Raleigh, North Carolina and Copp apologized for costing him a first-round pick. A conditional second-round selection Drury sent to the Jets in that deal became a first-rounder with the Rangers qualifying for the conference final.

The trade deadline acquisitions are all impending unrestricted free agents and Drury, again, not surprisingly, would not speculate about their futures with the Rangers.

“They’ll be plenty of time for that kind of thoughts and questions after it’s all over,” Drury said. “They’ve certainly all fit in well and been used extremely well by Turk (Gallant). We’re certainly thrilled to have them all.”

So, no, there were no revelations from Drury in just his fifth media session since taking the job, He spoke just once during the regular season, not including some questions he took about Henrik Lundqvist the day No. 30’s jersey was retired.

No revelations but a team in the conference final. Surely, the fans see that as a fair deal.