Chris Drury may be a rookie general manager, but it was his pulse on the Rangers after six years in a front-office role that made the organization’s new head honcho so appealing to CEO Jim Dolan to promote back in May.
While this may be his first offseason in charge, it’s Drury’s second time navigating an expansion draft with the Rangers, after he was involved in the Vegas Golden Knights’ version in 2017 when he was assistant GM.
In a conference call with reporters ahead of Wednesday’s Seattle Kraken expansion draft, Drury said, as a result of his previous experience, he knows “the lay of the land.”
That knowledge led Drury to include fourth-line center Kevin Rooney in the Rangers’ 7-3-1 protection list submitted this past weekend over the unheralded journeyman Colin Blackwell and the young, big-bodied Julien Gauthier.
The Blueshirts are thin down the middle and it made a lot of sense to protect Rooney, one of the few roster options who fits in that fourth-line center role. While the 22-year-old Morgan Barron is also a candidate for that spot, the Rangers likely didn’t want to risk giving up Rooney’s penalty-killing abilities after Brett Howden was traded to Vegas this past Saturday. Barron, who played five games for the Rangers in 2020-21, is exempt from the expansion draft.
Of the 18 players the Rangers exposed, Blackwell is likely the most enticing available option for the Kraken. Blackwell was two goals short (12) of rounding out the Rangers’ top-five scorers this past season, in which he competed in more games (47) than he had in his previous two years with the Predators (33). His workhorse mentality for the price of a $725,000 cap hit, before he becomes an unrestricted free agent after 2021-22, could land Blackwell in Seattle.
There’s also a strong possibility the Kraken takes Gauthier, who Seattle general manager Ron Francis selected 21st overall in 2016 when he was at the helm of the Hurricanes. The 6-foot-4 Gauthier could have a tremendous upside and may be more attractive to the Kraken because of his two-way contract.
“Everyone is going to lose a player and there’s no easy decisions,” Drury said. “Whether it was a player we ended up protecting or exposing, they’re tough decisions to make. I just tried to make the best decision I could, and it’s just kind of where it ended up.”
Along with Blackwell and Gauthier, Drury also exposed three pending unrestricted free agents, headlined by the recently acquired Barclay Goodrow – as well as veteran defenseman Brendan Smith and Phil Di Giuseppe. Technically, Seattle has the exclusive rights to negotiate with UFA’s who were exposed by their respective teams until Wednesday.
Word is, however, the Rangers and Goodrow have already engaged in serious contract negotiations.
The thought is that Seattle wouldn’t want to select a player like Goodrow, who would certainly command more money if he hits the market when free agency officially begins on July 28. And considering Drury and the Rangers have already made their intentions of signing the gritty winger known, the Kraken will likely stay away.
There’s still a laundry list of things for Drury to get done by the end of this short offseason, but the new commander in chief expects more to unfold after the expansion draft. That likely includes buying out exiled defenseman Tony DeAngelo, hashing out a new contract – or not – with restricted free agent Pavel Buchnevich, as well as goalie Igor Shesterkin and 21-year-old center Filip Chytil, and pursuing other additions.
“I think you could say that things were held up a little bit just by [the expansion process] and people trying to get their lists and dealing with a deadline coming on Saturday,” Drury said. “If I had to guess, yeah, I would say that things will pick up on all fronts when teams know what they lost and what kind of player they lost and how much money, and what kind of role that player played on their team. I think things will either pick up or change come Thursday at 1 when the freeze is over.”