Counting down the Top 10 NY sports stories of 2021: No. 10 - Rangers' firings and hirings

We're counting down the Top 10 New York sports stories of 2021, starting at No. 10 on our list...

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During the 2020-21 NHL season, the Rangers were doing everything in their power to make the playoffs. But they ultimately fell short of that goal despite a valiant effort in the second half of the season. 

Seeing promise from their group of young talent and seasoned veterans, the organization decided to make a surprising shift from the front office to the coaching staff.

The biggest shock came when president John Davidson and GM Jeff Gorton were fired and Chris Drury took on both roles in May. If anything, head coach David Quinn's job had been in jeopardy (more on that in just a bit), but after what the Rangers did — ripping off an impressive second-half winning streak — it seemed they had the right personnel in place to make it back to the Stanley Cup playoffs. 

Instead, Drury was tasked with righting the ship. 

"I really believe in what we have accomplished since the letter, with what we were able to do," Drury said on May 6 when addressing his new role. "Not only adding young assets and making some key trades, signing obviously a marquee free agent in the Breadman [Artemi Panarin].

"So we do have a lot of good pieces. I think it's an exciting time for the organization. Just like every organization does when the season ends, we're gonna take a look at everything and do what we can to take the next step and make ourselves a playoff team."

That next step was firing Quinn and looking for a new head coach. Gerard Gallant was the man for the job, and on June 22, he talked about what he was going to do at Madison Square Garden to get the Rangers back to glory.

"When I was in Vegas — and I hate talking about the past — we went to training camp with a plan to put our systems in place and we expect everybody to play a 200-foot game,” he told reporters via Zoom. “Everybody good defensively, everybody good offensively, everybody to have a role on the hockey team. That’s important to me.

"I want it to be the hardest working team in the league. I want to compete hard, to battle hard, to make teams say, 'You know what? That team works hard every night.'"

And so the new era for the Blueshirts began -- one that owner James Dolan hopes yields the team's first Stanley Cup since the 1993-94 season.