It’s been one year since Chris Drury hit “send” on a memo that reverberated in the inbox of every NHL general manager.

The New York Rangers were coming off a western trip that brought their underlying flaws to the forefront and convinced their team president and general manager that change was needed. He responded with an uncharacteristically revealing note that essentially put a “for sale” sign on his roster and was predictably leaked in a matter of hours. The team responded by losing 15 out of 19 games from late November through December to effectively tank the 2024-25 season.

At best, Drury was willing to risk fracturing a fragile locker room in the name of shaking up a regressing core. At worst, he acted carelessly and failed to recognize the inevitably messy fallout.

The merits of that decision will be debated for years to come, but this can’t be argued: One year after his stunning missive, it’s hard to point to any tangible progress. The Rangers remain mired in mediocrity, teetering on the edge of something worse.

For the second straight year, they’ve returned from a western trip that exposed them as more pretender than contender. The bumbling Blueshirts were thoroughly outplayed in three consecutive losses to the Vegas Golden Knights, Colorado Avalanche and Utah Mammoth — and though coach Mike Sullivan lamented a lack of “collective effort” after Saturday’s 3-2 loss to the Mammoth, New York’s bigger issue is a lack of collective talent.

Most nights, they’re at a disadvantage in the all-important skill and speed categories.

Drury’s upheaval has left the Rangers painfully thin on game-breakers. He’s completed 10 trades in the last 12 months, and though he was applauded for shrewdly shedding salary in a few of those instances, the overall state of the roster has been weakened. Chris Kreider, Kaapo Kakko, Filip Chytil, Reilly Smith, Jimmy Vesey, Ryan Lindgren, K’Andre Miller, Victor Mancini and former captain Jacob Trouba each had their warts, but the only true impact players who came back in any of those trades were steady-but-unspectacular defenseman Will Borgen and new captain J.T. Miller. New York’s lackluster depth reflects that discrepancy, with a poor development track record that predates Drury but has continued on his watch, exacerbating the problem.

Though the memo served as a flashpoint, the deterioration can be traced back even further. The Rangers’ late 2010s/early 2020s rebuild was interrupted by the abrupt firings of team president John Davidson and general manager Jeff Gorton in May 2021, but the players they assembled were good enough to take them to the Eastern Conference Final in 2022 and again in 2024. That turned out to be their ceiling, with Drury unable to push them over the hump. The list of needle-movers acquired during that three-year window who weren’t pure rentals starts and ends with 2022 free-agent center Vincent Trocheck. Attempts to reel in other upgrades repeatedly fell short, allowing a once-promising core to fizzle before our eyes.

It’s left the Rangers stuck in neutral. They banked on J.T. Miller as their bold move, but he looks like a good, not great, player — one who can succeed in a winning environment but doesn’t drive play at a high enough level to elevate a middling team. He’s joined Trocheck, Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad among a group of 32-and-older forwards who are being asked to carry the load but no longer seem capable of matching the league’s best at their positions. Their supporting cast largely consists of limited role players who would be fourth-liners or healthy scratches on most playoff teams. That leaves very little margin for error for Igor Shesterkin and Jonathan Quick, with New York hard-pressed to win whenever its goalies aren’t near-perfect.

The results reflect that unsustainable reality. The Rangers are 25-25-5 since Miller came over in a Jan. 31 trade with the Vancouver Canucks, including a 10-11-2 start this season that left them only 1 point out of the Eastern Conference’s basement entering play Sunday. (In a wild twist of fate, Kreider, Trouba and the resurgent Anaheim Ducks are sitting in first place in the Pacific Division.)

The Rangers have 59 games remaining to change the narrative, but we’ve seen little in the past year to inspire confidence that they will. And if they unravel for the second straight season, what will that mean for Drury’s future? Owner James Dolan has stood firmly behind his handpicked front-office boss to this point, but it’s increasingly difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel — especially as the 2026 free-agent class has shifted from potentially star-studded to definitively underwhelming. Even Sullivan, who’s widely considered one of the NHL’s top coaches, might not be able to plug all these leaks.

The onus to figure it out ultimately falls on Drury, who’s still searching for solutions one year later.