Chris Drury accomplished what he set out to do at NHL Draft
Rangers general manager Chris Drury is seen prior to the start of Round 2 of the 2022 Upper Deck NHL Draft at Bell Centre on Friday, in Montreal. Credit: Getty Images/Bruce Bennett
MONTREAL — As the other 31 teams sat politely at their tables at Bell Centre on Friday afternoon, pretending to pay attention while the seventh and final round of the 2022 NHL Draft was being conducted, the Rangers’ table was empty.
They had come to the draft without a first-round pick or a seventh-rounder, so their work was done, and they didn’t feel the need to stick around until the end.
They had done what they needed to do.
The biggest thing Rangers president and general manager Chris Drury accomplished while in Montreal was successfully off-loading backup goaltender Alexandar Georgiev to the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday for three draft picks.
Georgiev was due a $2.65 million qualifying offer by 5 p.m. Monday or he would become an unrestricted free agent with arbitration rights and the Rangers would lose him for nothing.
The Rangers were never going to qualify Georgiev at that number, so moving him for third- and fifth-round picks this year and a third next year was a win for Drury.
As for the draft picks they made, the Rangers clearly had a plan to draft centers — physical, abrasive two-way centers. They did that, grabbing four centers with their six picks, though their second-round selection, Adam Sykora, a 17-year-old Slovak who aspires to play like Boston Bruins pest Brad Marchand, is listed as a center/left wing.
With the third-rounder they got from Colorado, they took center Bryce McConnell-Barker, and in the fourth round, they took Colgate University-bound center Noah Laba. The Rangers took Nebraska-Omaha defenseman Vittorio Mancini and Quebec league left wing Maxim Barbashev in the fifth round and Harvard center Zakary Karpa in the sixth.
So now the heavy lifting comes for Drury, who has a fair amount of work to do to put together his roster for next season. Free agency begins on Wednesday, and Drury figures to be active.
His top priority will be to find someone — at the right price — to fill the second-line center role. Two in-house options, Ryan Strome and Andrew Copp, will hit the market as UFAs on Wednesday.
With a projected $10.2 million available under the salary cap, the Rangers can’t afford to spend much on a No. 2 center. A deal in the $5.5 million range is about it. Drury has to leave space to re-sign restricted free agent Kaapo Kakko and also has to be mindful of having cap room next season, when he’ll need to re-sign defenseman K’Andre Miller and forward Alexis Lafreniere.
Then there’s the matter of finding a backup goaltender.
There was some movement in the goalie carousel this past week as rebuilding Chicago traded for Toronto’s Petr Mrazek, Detroit traded for St. Louis backup Ville Husso and pending free agents Marc-Andre Fleury and Casey DeSmith re-signed with Minnesota and Pittsburgh, respectively.
Still, Drury is confident he’ll be able to find a suitable No. 2 behind Igor Shesterkin.
“We hope so,’’ he said. “There are some good ones out there . . . Obviously, we’re exploring ways to get a backup.”
Braden Holtby, Martin Jones, Thomas Greiss and Scott Wedgewood are out there on the free-agent market in the Rangers’ price range, which probably is no more than $1 million or so. Drury said he’s also willing to trade for a goalie if necessary.
Former Islander Greiss would seem to make a lot of sense for the Rangers’ needs. Shesterkin, who won the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s best goaltender in 2021-22, played in 53 regular-season games — the most he’s ever played in a season in his pro career — and 20 playoff games. He figures to play even more in 2022-23.
The Rangers will need a veteran who can handle not playing for long stretches of time but can fill in capably if Shesterkin is forced to miss games because of injury. That’s something the 26-year-old Georgiev struggled to do, but Greiss, 36, may be better able to deal with that situation.
Greiss spent the last two seasons playing for a rebuilding Detroit team, so his numbers (10-15-1, 3.66 goals-against average, .891 save percentage last season) might not be an accurate reflection of just how well he played.
Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
