Why Chris Drury will mortgage the future to win now

How much time does Drury have?

If you go by the NHL standard, he has five years to win a Stanley Cup or get to the Final.  Not only that, but the Rangers need to make the postseason as soon as next season and show improvement each year.

To add to the time pressure, Artemi Panarin turns 30 in October and Chris Kreider turned 30 in April. Mika Zibanejad will probably be extended and he turned 28 last month.  The clock is ticking on trio and their window of excellence will close before Drury’s five years are up.

You know what that means.  In order to put together a winner in a year or two, that means trading away prospects and draft picks.  A 2021 first round draft pick who doesn’t become an impact player in the NHL in 2025 does Drury no good.  The same goes for the plethora of kids on the Rangers roster.  Ownership has already gotten tired of hearing about potential, Jim Dolan wants results.

Are the Avalanche a model?

The model that Drury could emulate is the Colorado Avalanche. As recently as 2016-17, the Avs were the worst team in hockey with the weakest offense and the worst defense.  They missed the playoffs six of seven years and with Joe Sakic at the helm, they rebuilt their team to the point where this season they won the President’s Trophy and are a Cup favorite.

Colorado has become a Cup favorite by savvy drafting and some smart trades.  Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen and Gabriel Landeskog were all draft picks along with Cale Makar and Tyson Jost.  They turned Matt Duchene into Bowen Byram and Samuel Girard.  They turned a Washington cap problem into Philip Grubauer and an Islanders cap issue into Devon Toews.  They flipped Tyson Barrie and Alex Kerfoot for Nazem Kadri.  They got Andre Burakovsky for two draft picks.  The swapped two middle of the lineup players for Brandon Saad.  Oh yes, they flipped a failed draft pick to the Rangers for Ryan Graves.  They also made some decent free agent signings in Joonas Donskoi, Valeri Nichushkin and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare.

But the key for the Avalanche is their top line of MacKinnon, Landeskog and Rantanen, along with their top four D pairings of Makar, Toews, Girard and Graves.

The good news for the Blueshirts is their top six compare favorably to the Avalanche in terms of skill.  The question is whether there is anyone on the Rangers who would do what Landeskog did in Game One of their series with St. Louis, taking on Brayden Schenn after he laid a hit on Rantanen.

But for all the hype about the Avs, they still haven’t gotten past the second round the last three years and if they have an early playoff exit, even Sakic’s job could be in trouble, though there is no doubt that  coach Jared Bednar would be sacrificed first.