Chris Drury made sweeping changes to the player personnel and scouting departments when he was named president and general manager of the Rangers just under five years ago.
Since then, there haven’t been many significant adjustments.
The Rangers brought back Kevin Maxwell in the same director of pro scouting role he held for 11 seasons in New York, adding director of player personnel to his title, the team announced Wednesday before their final home game of the 2025-26 season.
It’s not exactly a brand-new voice, considering Maxwell worked for the Rangers for 14 seasons from 2008-09 to 2021-22. But Maxwell is an experienced (re)addition to a Blueshirts front office that can use an alternative perspective as they head into a pivotal offseason.
Drafting, developing and identifying untapped/existing talent around the NHL have been weak points of the organization for quite some time.
With over 30 years in an NHL front office/scouting department, Maxwell is tasked with helping guide this Rangers retool in the right direction. The Rangers need to get more out of their organizationally grown prospects, but also must improve on their free agent/trade/waiver targets.
That’s not to say there hasn’t been any success on that front. Vladislav Gavrikov has been a home run free-agent signing so far. Deadline acquisitions Andrew Copp, Frank Vatrano and Niko Mikkola have all gone on to establish themselves with their respective teams.
There have also been some colossal swings and misses. Signing Patrick Nemeth to a three-year deal was questionable in July 2021 and just plain awful now upon reflection. So were the one-year deals for Ryan Carpenter (2022), Nick Bonino (2023) and Tyler Pitlick (2023).
Sammy Blais was never going to be part of an adequate return package for Pavel Buchnevich, and Tye Kartye is a much better waiver pickup than Jake Leschyshyn (January 2023) ever was.
When Drury first joined the Rangers front office as director of player development in 2015, Maxwell had already been with the organization for seven seasons. He began as a pro scout in 2008-09 before working his way up to director of professional scouting in 2011-12.
Maxwell most recently worked for the Blues, serving as a pro scout and general manager of the team’s AHL affiliate, the Springfield Thunderbirds, for the past four seasons.
Working alongside John Lilley — the Rangers director of amateur scouting and player personnel since Drury came in — once again, Maxwell will return to overseeing the pro side of player personnel, just like he did when Lilley was first hired in 2021.
Lilley will continue to be in charge of the amateur side.
Since Lilley’s first draft in 2021, the Rangers have had seven picks make their NHL debut with the team. Five players came up this season alone, a majority of whom only got looks amid the organization’s struggles and retooling announcement.
Two — Brennan Othmann (No. 16 overall in 2021) and Victor Mancini (No. 159 overall in 2022) — have been traded away.
The Rangers have 11 picks in this year’s draft, which is the most they’ve had since they made 13 selections in 2004.
Jed Ortmeyer has served as the organization’s director of player development since 2017-18. Jamie Herrington started with the club as an amateur scout in 2016-17 before becoming director of NCAA scouting in 2021-22.
The trio of Garth Joy (director of player personnel and director of pro scouting), Andrew Schneider (director of North American amateur scouting) and Ari Vuori (director of European scouting) all started during the 2022-23 season.
While Tanner Glass began his post-playing career as a development coach for the Rangers in 2019-20, the 42-year-old became an assistant director of player development in 2020-21.
The Rangers then added Marc Staal as a development assistant last season.
When Drury spoke after trading Artemi Panarin to the Kings before the Olympic break, the 49-year-old fielded questions about the direction of his retool. Asked by The Post if he had plans to make changes to scouting and development, the 49-year-old expressed how important those two departments are.
“The draft and development, organizations need to make good draft picks, obviously, and they need those draft picks to develop and get to the big club and impact the lineup,” Drury said at the time. “Again, those are two important parts of the organization, along with scouting and a number of other departments that we’re always looking at and seeing if we can tweak things, seeing what we can learn from other organizations that have gone through this before, and always looking for ways in both those departments to be better.”
