The Rangers have announced that Igor Shesterkin will miss the rest of the season following his injury last night.
The Rangers also announced that Joonas Korpisalo will be out for four weeks and that center Joe Veleno is out for three months.
The Rangers are likely to place Shesterkin on LTIR.
Adam Rotter: This was obviously the worst case scenario and the Rangers, formally or not, needed to rule Shesterkin out for the season to get the maximum amount of LTIR. Shesterkin started the season playing so well, like he himself was going to will the Rangers to the playoffs the way that Henrik Lundqvist did at times. But now the Rangers will be without the best goalie in the world with 78 games left in the season.
Maybe this brings the Rangers together, they rally, battle, commit to defense and behind Dylan Garand and eventually Korpisalo, they stay in the playoff race. Maybe they do that for a while before they run out of gas in the last third of the season and then sell at the deadline again and finish with another top-1o pick. Maybe it’s just downhill from here and this injury, while killing the season, leads to the Rangers getting a high-end forward to build with long-term and, outside of some of the UFAs that they sell, they try to run it back next year with a healthy Shesterkin.
I’d expect the Rangers to bring in another goalie, probably one that is still unsigned. I very much doubt the Rangers will now shift gears and swing for the fences and try to get Connor Hellebuyck to save the season. That would cost a lot and he’s signed past this season. While not impossible, I don’t expect Jonathan Quick to come out of retirement.
Puck Pedia lists four goalies as UFAs though Conor Ingram retired. The others on the list are James Reimer, Petr Mrazek and Matt Murray. All three are veterans, all three have their warts and Mrazek and Murray have had major injuries. Murray, although it was 10 years ago, did win two Stanley Cups with Mike Sullivan before his game fell off. The Rangers could trade for a goalie but unless the cost is very low, I’d expect them to either sign a free agent or attempt to roll with what they have if they don’t believe any free agent is better than Spencer Martin as a backup.
So much of the hope for this season was around Alexis Lafreniere and Gabe Perreault taking steps forward, around Marcus Pettersson and Sean Durzi as the second pair and the added depth, but it was all, literally, backstopped by Igor Shesterkin. Now Shesterkin is gone and the Rangers will need to find a way through.