New York Rangers: Hiring Chris Drury Was a No Brainer

The former New York Rangers captain has been promoted to be the Assistant General Manager to Jeff Gorton.

Chris Drury may not be on the ice for the New York Rangers anymore, but he may be entering his biggest role with the team yet. The New York Rangers announced Friday that the former team captain was promoted to the role of Assistant GM role.

“In his expanded role, Drury, 40, will assist Gorton on all player transactions and contract negotiations, and he will continue to assist in overseeing and evaluating all players at the collegiate level.” said the team in its press release on the team’s website.

The press release also stated that Drury will continue to assist in player development. He will act as a liaison between the hockey operations department and the organization’s prospects.

This was a great hire for the organization. The Assistant General Manager role was vacant since current GM Jeff Gorton was promoted last offseason. Gorton will benefit greatly from having a right-hand man now.

At 40 years of age, Drury is still relatively young. In fact, he will be among the youngest Assistant GMs in the league. He is a guy who is respected well by everyone throughout the league ever since his playing days. Since Drury is not too far removed from the game–his last NHL game was played in 2011–he has a good feel for the current crop of players, and where he thinks the game will be going in the future.

The Connecticut-born Drury played nearly 900 games at the NHL level while producing 255 goals and 615 points. He also has a Calder Trophy and a Stanley Cup ring, which speaks to how successful his career was.

A lot of the young players in the league respect Drury and for good reason. The Rangers are making a smart decision to continue to keep Drury involved in prospect development.

All of this was evident a few weeks ago when the team signed coveted college free agent forward Jimmy Vesey. There has been a lot written about the impact that Drury had on the Vesey negotiations.

According to a bunch of different reports, Vesey was “very impressed” with the former Ranger in the interview process. According to SNY, among the main reasons the Harvard forward chose the Rangers was Drury’s interview. Vesey knows how successful Drury was in his career.

Just like Vesey, Drury was also a Hobby Baker award winner, one of the 4 players in Rangers history to have won the award in their college days.

In his phone conference after the Vesey signing, Jeff Gorton had this to say about Drury:

There seems to be a good thing going in the New York Rangers front office. Now they have a GM who has a pretty good grip on what a team needs to succeed based on his offseason acquisitions so far–calm down defense people, a trade is likely coming–so now it looks like the team has an Assistant GM who has a good grip on things as well.

Now is your chance, Chris.

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