Though Igor Shesterkin is the highest-paid goalie in NHL history, with an average annual value of $11.5 million, he’s coming
Though Igor Shesterkin is the highest-paid goalie in NHL history, with an average annual value of $11.5 million, he’s coming off a down season by his lofty standards. In fact, the New York Rangers No. 1 netminder has seen his goals-against average rise, and save percentage drop, for each of the past three seasons. And it’s possible that no team in the League is more dependent on its goalie in order to contend for a playoff berth than the Rangers.
Oddly, though, Shesterkin flew almost completely under the radar during this just-completed training camp and preseason.
Instead, the focus was elsewhere. There’s new high-profile coach, Mike Sullivan. J.T. Miller was named captain, and then sustained a lower-body injury. Artemi Panarin didn’t appear in a single preseason game due to injuries. The kids — Noah Laba, Gabe Perreault, and Scott Morrow — were the three most talked about players in camp. And bounce-back performances were expected from Mika Zibanejad, Alexis Lafreniere and Adam Fox.
Shesterkin was more or less an afterthought.
But the Rangers won’t return to the postseason unless Shesterkin reverses some concerning trends. With the 2022 Vezina Trophy winner’s monster eight-year, $92 million extension kicking in this season, the Rangers need the 29-year-old to return to the spectacular form that earned him that record-setting contract.
Igor Shesterkin’s effectiveness has fallen for the past three seasons
It’s important to note that Shesterkin was not exacvtly bad last season. He saved 21.6 goals above expected, seventh-best in the League, per Money Puck. His six shutouts were tied for second-most in the NHL. Yet his 2.86 GAA was the highest of his career; and his .905 save percentage was far and away the worst of six NHL seasons.
Shesterkin put together one of the best seasons by a goalie in NHL history in 2021-22, leading the league with a .935 save percentage and 2.07 GAA. Some regression was of course expected from those heights, but in the three seasons since, his save percentage fell to .916 in 2022-23, .912 the following season and .905 last year. His GAA jumped to 2.48 in 2022-23, then 2.58 the next season before rising to his career-worst mark in 2024-25.
Shesterkin’s results, of course, must be qualified by the fact that the Rangers simply have never been an elite defensive team during his six-season career. And that’s why he’s been as crucial to his club’s fortunes as any goalie in the NHL. The Rangers don’t get anywhere near the 2022 and 2024 Eastern Conference Finals without his brilliance. Shesterkin’s often-spectacular work in net, consistently covering up for defensive breakdowns, has been the No. 1 reason why the Rangers have been a playoff contender over the past four years.
Last season, Shesterkin faced the most shots (1,751) and made the most saves (1,584) in the league, playing for a team that gave up 3.11 goals per game, the 14th-highest mark in the NHL. Despite the lack of support from his teammates, the player whose consistency and focus has been a hallmark of his play seemed to show cracks at times.
Whether Shesterkin was worn down mentally and/or physically by having to constantly keep his defensively-challenged team in games – he also made 61 starts and played 3,505 minutes, each a career high – isn’t known. Perhaps Sullivan’s demand for increased commitment to team defense – along with key new personnel – will go a long way to help Shesterkin at least somewhat resemble his 2021-22 self as he gets set to enter his 30s.
Sullivan, general manager Chris Drury’s long-preferred coach, was hired in large part to clean up New York’s chronic goal-prevention failings. The club struggled badly last season with former coach Peter Laviolette’s hybrid man/zone approach in its own end. Sullivan’s zone system, which emphasizes pushing play to the perimeter and then winning puck battles in the defensive zone, should better suit this roster and, in theory, tighten things up in front of Shesterkin.
The thinking is that if the Rangers give Shesterkin even just a little more consistent help, he’s capable of handling the rest as an elite goalie in the middle of his prime.
Arrivals of Mike Sullivan, Vladislav Gavrikov might help Igor Shesterkin’s game
Of course, it’s not as if Sullivan has been asked much, if anything, about this during camp. There’s a sense that Shesterkin’s return to elite form is all but a given. For the sake of the Rangers, who made what was a necessary huge financial bet on that happening, they better hope so.
The addition of free-agent defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov should be a major help to Shesterkin and the Rangers. Signed to a seven-year, $49 million contract July 1, Gavrikov is expected to team with Fox and solidify the top pair. Though plenty of questions about the blue line remain beyond that duo, Gavrikov should help settle down a group that often collapsed last season.
While it’s tough to judge the meaning of preseason results for netminders, it’s worth noting that Shesterkin was very good in his first two starts, giving up one goal in each, before he allowed three goals on 15 shots in the preseason finale, a 4-1 loss to the Boston Bruins on Saturday.
The Rangers won’t be back in the Stanley Cup Playoffs after missing them last season if Zibanejad and Lafreniere don’t rediscover their past forms. They won’t be back if they can’t find more offensive production from the bottom-six forward group, or if Fox continues to look a step slow and chaos continues to reign in their own zone.
Even if Sullivan and his staff can fix all of that, however, it won’t matter if the club’s most important player can’t reverse what has been slow but steadily sinking effectiveness. Without Shesterkin at his best, all of the higher-profile storylines from this Rangers camp will become secondary. In that case, the new coach will then surely face plenty of questions from the media about the highest-paid goalie in history, one who holds the biggest key to whether Sullivan’s tenure on Broadway will be a success.
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