The 2025-26 season has been nothing but a disaster for the New York Rangers. A season in which they were looking to get back into the playoffs has turned into one full of injuries and overall poor play from the entire team. General manager Chris Drury has realized this season isn’t going as planned and sent out a letter to the fanbase saying the team is going to be retooled over the following weeks and months. In this piece, we are going to look at what this retool could realistically look like.
Artemi Panarin Will Be Traded by the Trade Deadline
The first big domino that will fall will be the trading of franchise superstar Artemi Panarin. He is in the final year of his contract, and it has been reported by many that he will not receive a contract extension offer. Instead, Drury is expected to work with Panarin and his agent to find him a new home before the trade deadline. Panarin has been an amazing player for the team over the past seven seasons, playing in 477 games with the club, scoring 202 goals, and recording 601 points.
Panarin is going to be the top name on the trade market, and he will have a say in what team he wants to go to due to his having a full no-move clause in his contract. Any team heading into the playoffs is going to want a top point-scoring winger added to their group, and there will be no player better to get than Panarin.
He should be able to bring the Rangers back some good pieces in a potential trade, whether it be a first-round pick and a top prospect, or maybe even younger players who are ready to play in the NHL now. It will be interesting to see what kind of return the team gets because moving on from Panarin is just step one in this retooling process.
Who Else Could Be on the Move?
As of right now, it does not seem that any other player on the team who has a no-move clause in their contract has asked to be traded. That means Adam Fox, J.T. Miller, Mika Zibanejad, Vladislav Gavrikov, and Igor Shesterkin are all here to stay at least for now. So that begs the question of who else besides Panarin could be on the move prior to the deadline and into the offseason. Two names that should be looked at as top trade candidates are Vincent Trocheck and Alexis Lafreniere.
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Trocheck is one of these core players who doesn’t have full trade protection in his contract. He could be the perfect piece to move prior to the deadline because any team that trades for him will have him for their next three playoff runs. He could be the top center on the market, and the return he could fetch in a trade might be more than what the Rangers get back for Panarin.
When it comes to Lafreniere, he hasn’t shown any flashes of being the player the Rangers hoped he would be outside of one season. With him being in year one of a seven-year deal, taking calls on him now and into the offseason could be the right call, as you don’t want to be stuck with him and this deal if he never truly turns into the player they thought he could be.
Can the Fans Trust Drury to Clean up His Mess?
This entire situation has been brewing ever since the Rangers lost in the Eastern Conference Final back in 2024. Drury knew the team needed changes at the time, but went about making those changes in the wrong way. He forced out both Barclay Goodrow and Jacob Trouba, two locker room leaders, and this led to the terrible season the team had.
Other players like Kaapo Kakko, Filip Chytil, K’Andre Miller, and Chris Kreider have all been traded over the past year, while a player like J.T. Miller was brought in to be a new locker-room leader. Miller’s arrival was also a move by Drury to try to keep this core’s contention window open, but that had failed drastically and has led us to the release of this letter.
The big question now is whether the fans can trust Drury to clean up the mess he made. Fans have already been chanting “Fire Drury” at each of the last two home games, but it seems clear that he isn’t going anywhere, and it will be up to him to retool the team in the way he sees fit.
He has made moves over the years that have made fans happy, but he has also made plenty of mistakes that have left fans scratching their heads. If the Rangers want to be competitive in the next two to three seasons or even next season, fans are going to have to trust that Drury makes the right moves to help bring this franchise back to being a Stanley Cup contender.
Almost eight years ago, the first version of “The Letter” was sent out to the fans, saying the Rangers were going to be entering a rebuild. Now, while this time around won’t be a full-on rebuild, it’s sad to acknowledge that this new era of Rangers hockey never lived up to the expectations fans had for it all those years ago.
These next few weeks and months will be a very interesting time in New York, and maybe in a few years, we will look back on this day as the day that either saved the team or sent them in a worse direction.
