Rangers owner James Dolan directly planned and plotted the announcement of Chris Drury’s multi-year contract extension for the New York Rangers.
Typically, contract extensions for management positions in the NHL are kept under wraps and sometimes not even made public.
This is why it was strange when the Rangers officially announced that the team is extending the president and general manager, Drury, to a multi-year contract.
Why would the Rangers lay out all of these details publicly?
Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman believes that Dolan was trying to send a message to everybody.
“People who know the owner of the Rangers a lot better than I do, said I will bet you that he is going to double down on Drury. They said because he likes Drury, he put Drury there and that is just Jim Dolan… He was going to back him in a forceful way where everybody was going to see it. That’s exactly what happened. Dolan backed Drury in the most forceful way,” Friedman said.
Drury faced backlash this season due to the way he went out moving on from Barclay Goodrow and Jacob Trouba as well as the league-wide memo he sent out early on in the 2024-25 campaign indicating his desire to make trades to shake up the team’s core.
All of this on top of the fact that Drury has now already fired three coaches since 2021 seemingly put his job in jeopardy, but clearly he was safe all along.
With the backing of the owner, this is still Drury’s team whether you like it or not and he will continue to reconstruct the roster as he sees fit.
James Dolan Is Sending A Clear Message With Chris Drury Contract Extension
The New York <a href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/new-york-rangers" target="_blank">Rangers</a> signed Chris Drury to a multi-year extension on Wednesday to remain as the team’s president and general manager.
“This I believe is Dolan’s way of saying, this is my guy, he’s in charge,” Friedman said. “You don’t surprise your owner… I don’t think anything happened this year that James Dolan was against or didn’t want to happen. He either told Drury to do it or Drury said this is what I want to do and Dolan backed it…
“They (the players) just got told that what happened this year in the owner's eyes was what needed to happen and he has the support.”