Oh absolutely, the players have been a joke, and an embarrassment. I don't recall me saying everything is Drury's fault, and only Drury's fault, the players need to take responsibility as well. Multiple things can be true, the players should be ashamed of themselves, and Drury is horrific at his job. BUT you cannot fire all the players AND Drury runs EVERYTHING in the whole organization, good or bad, the buck stops with him, that's how it works with accountability.
It isn't easy for you to look at Drury in an objective and unbiased way, see how he has cycled through 3 coaches over the past 4 seasons, see how 3 of the past 4 seasons have ended as an embarrassing joke, and see how he clearly has no plan. It's not easy to acknowledge those very crystal-clear things.
Your "defenses" of Drury are usually excuses and rationalizations:
He's better than Gorton, which BTW is debatable at best, but even if true, doesn't matter. Drury, or anyone, should be judged on their own merits after a fair amount of time, not on whether or not they are better than the prior person, especially when the prior guy got fired because he didn't get the job done. We fired the last guy because he wasn't good at his job, but you are better than the guy we fired (debatable), so that must mean no matter what you are good. Illogical.
Who else can you hire that's better. That is a crazy comment. So, the inference being, Drury may stink, but no way you could find anyone better, so stay with a guy who is terrible at his job, just a crazy way of thinking. Interesting note, I recall me saying many times, how about the assistant GM in Florida, let's give him a shot...well one local team listened, he's now the GM of the Devils, we'll see how he does in the big chair. Good for the Devs.
Now it's the average tenure of an NHL coach, not named Cooper, is 2.3 seasons, so Drury recycling coaches like toilet paper isn't that bad actually. Another crazy excuse/rationalization. Because other teams have over the top upheaval and lack of consistency, cohesion and leadership, that makes it okay and a winning formula for Drury to change coaches every 1.3 seasons. Zero logic IMO.
Look, it's really difficult to have an honest debate about this, because Drury has been so horrific at his jobs it speaks for itself. With that said, everyone is entitled to their opinions, fact based or not, and as Ranger fans, we'll ALL hope Drury finally gets it right this summer (he's going to be here for a long time unfortunately). He has some big work ahead of him, we'll see if he can get it done in a positive way. Fingers crossed he is successful.
