Chris Drury wanted to show Rangers he believes in playoff ‘push’ with measured trade deadline
NY Post
OTTAWA, Ontario — Chris Drury said he wanted to thread the needle for the Rangers ahead of Friday’s 3 p.m. trade deadline.
To do so in a season that has been difficult to find hope in but is not yet hopeless, the Rangers president and general manager strived to make moves that made the most sense for the future while not sacrificing the team’s competitiveness for this final 20-game push to qualify for the 2024-25 playoffs.
“Trying to make sure we got some assets back for our [unrestricted free agents] for the future, whether it’s a young player like [Brendan] Brisson or some picks, another young player in [Juuso] Parssinen, while trying to show the group I still believe in them — which I do,” Drury said on a conference call with reporters a couple hours after the deadline passed. “As we push to the playoffs, push to try and make the playoffs and give them some NHL players in [Calvin] de Haan, Parssinen, [Carson] Soucy this last week to try and help the group get to the playoffs.”
After leveraging three of their impending unrestricted free agents — Ryan Lindgren, Jimmy Vesey and Reilly Smith — in a couple of trades earlier this week that restocked some draft/prospect capital and padded the defense, signing in-season acquisition Urho Vaakanainen to a two-year extension with an average annual value of $1.55 million was Drury’s main order of business on Friday.
That’s because all that Drury wanted to accomplish had already been achieved earlier this week.
The only other move Drury made on Friday was an AHL player exchange with the Sabres, in which he sent Erik Brannstrom — acquired with J.T. Miller from Vancouver on Jan. 31 — to Buffalo in exchange for Nicolas Aube-Kubel.
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