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The precipitous
decline in the performance and production of New York Rangers captain Chris
Drury has been startling to see and depressing to watch. It is inevitable that players will decline as
they get older, but the difference in many is the rate at which that decline
occurs. For Drury it has been rapid and
wrapped in the cloak of an already bloated contract for his prior level and the
bright lights of being captain to an original six team on Broadway. Today that saga took a very ugly turn in my
opinion because beyond the problems with production you expect that
accountability and team come before the pride of an individual player;
especially the captain of a team. That
does not appear to be the case right now for the Rangers.
Over the past few
weeks and even more the last week everyone has been doing the number count and
wondering when it would be that captain Chris Drury would finally have his
utter lack of production cause him to be scratched from the New York Rangers
lineup. In recent days there has been pushback
by the club against that idea of scratching Drury and talking about what he
brings to the club. Conveniently now
that Erik Christensen is ready to return to the lineup Chris Drury suddenly has
a balky knee for the past few weeks and now it has flared to the point where he
will miss the road trip. That excuse
does two things at least on its face; gives excuse for his poor play while
being able to claim his absence is strictly the knee without having to call him
a healthy scratch.
Per the teams
official twitter
Torts on Drury:
"He has had cranky knee and has progressively gotten worse...gone a few
weeks & flared up last night"
Torts: "He's
played this game hard for a long time and I think it's a little bit of wear and
tear...and it's just acting up on him now"
Sometimes you wonder
when you follow an organization what they think about the intelligence of the
fans they have and you look at this and it is hard not to take offense. I understand the intent to save the captain’s
pride and I even understand there is likely some legitimacy to the knee issue,
but to encase what is going on here as solely that insults the intelligence of
a loyal fanbase.
In the absence of
Drury the team’s lines in practice today per Jim Cerny:
Prospal-Stepan-Gaborik
Dubinsky-Anisimov-Callahan
Wolski-Boyle-Prust
Avery-Christensen-Zuccarello
In other practice news Lundqvist
stayed
after practice to work on some things with MZA and Boyle.
