Chris Drury signs multi-year contract extension with New York Rangers

If there were any question about how James Dolan felt about President and General Manager Chris Drury and his leadership of the New York Rangers, just in case you thought it remained a mystery following the aforementioned executive referencing the Madison Square Garden chairman as "Mr D." during a meeting with the media, you now have a loud and clear answer.

Peter Laviolette was fired after the Rangers severely regressed over the course of a season, and there was a question as to whether or not Drury would start feeling the heat. The players spoke openly on breakup day about what went wrong during the season, and you could infer that some weren't thrilled with how things went down off the ice this season. This latest move, the signing of Drury to a multi-year extension, is a response to that.

In many ways it sends a message that Drury is here to stay, and if certain players don't want to be part of the program, they can waive their respective clauses and go somewhere else. Drury has faced his fair share of criticism for waiving Barclay Goodrow in such a way that he'd be claimed by the San Jose Sharks, a team that may have been blocked his no-trade clause, and for the Jacob Trouba saga last summer which spilled into this season.

There was also the issue of the memo which named Chris Kreider, the longest tenured Ranger who battled through multiple injuries this season. The team fell into a skid that lasted the backend of November and all of December, and that stretch of time put them into a hole they never were able to dig themselves out of.

Drury, in his mind, was doing what he thought was best for the team, and it backfired. It will be interesting to see what lengths he goes to this summer in shaping the roster to his liking, and it will require some creativity given the fact that many of the players he ideally wants to move either have protection clauses or deals with term and higher cap hits that make it hard to move.

This latest extension signals that the team will continue to operate how he sees fit, and he has full backing over ownership to get the Rangers back to where it needs to be. The next logical step will be finding a coach who can instill a system that can contend for a Stanley Cup, and part of that will also involve acquiring players that fit that coach's system.

Things are never boring on Broadway, and even though we are just a few days into the offseason, we are starting to get a glimpse of what this summer could look like.