Colin Stephenson: Rangers lose Igor Shesterkin for season, so who will step up and fill void?
GREENBURGH — After the initial shock Friday night and the faint hope that things might not be as bad as they looked, the confirmation came Saturday for the Rangers. Goaltender Igor Shesterkin will miss the rest of the season with what the team called a lower-body injury.
Shesterkin was helped off the ice in the middle of a 3-1 road loss to the Washington Capitals after jamming his right skate into the goalpost as he scrambled to get into position during a penalty kill.
Seeing him slam his hand on the ice in frustration and watching on the replay just how hard his skate hit the post, it seemed likely that the injury news was going to be bad.
It sure was. And for a team that had started off so well — the Rangers entered Friday’s game with four straight victories and were tied at 1 when Shesterkin got hurt — losing its heart-and-soul goalie was a major blow to its hopes of making the playoffs.
“It’s obviously horrible to hear,’’ defenseman Adam Fox said after Saturday’s practice. “A guy like that who means so much to our team . . . obviously we’re still kind of processing that, and you just feel terrible for him. Having personally dealt with injuries the last few years — and him, too — it sucks when you’re not able to be out there and help the team. And he’s such an important piece of this team.”
One might say, without much pushback, that Shesterkin is the most important piece on the Rangers. He’s the guy who, on most nights, makes superhuman saves over and over to keep his team in the game. And he had been off to such a good start: 3-1 with a 1.79 goals-against average and .927 save percentage — plus a goal and an assist — through the first 5 1⁄2 games of the season.
With Shesterkin out, Dylan Garand, 24, who two weeks ago was waived and then assigned to AHL Hartford but was recalled after backup goalie Joonas Korpisalo was injured, will take over as the No. 1 goalie. He’ll start Sunday’s game against Vancouver at the Garden.
With Korpisalo still sidelined — the Rangers said he’ll be out another four weeks — journeyman Spencer Martin will be recalled from Hartford to serve as Garand’s backup.
Garand finished Friday’s game and stopped 11 of 12 shots. He shut out Detroit, 2-0, in his only start this season on Oct. 2 and has allowed one goal on 34 shots in 89 minutes and 45 seconds for a GAA of 0.67 and a save percentage of .971.
In three games at the end of last season, he was 2-0-1 with a 1.62 GAA and a .948 save percentage.
Garand, a fourth-round pick by the Rangers in the 2020 draft, said he’s ready to step in and carry the load for the Blueshirts.
“You never want to see guys get injured, especially your best player in Igor, and you know he means a lot to the guys in this room and a lot to me personally,’’ Garand said. “At the same time, it’s just ‘next man up,’ and that’s kind of my approach here.”
That’s certainly the right attitude, and the team has said it will rally around him. But can the Rangers expect Garand to do for this team what Shesterkin would have done?
Last season, the Blueshirts were clinging to hope that they might be able to stay in the playoff race when Shesterkin and Fox suffered lower-body injuries in the same game in early January. They went 2-11 in the 13 games both players missed, and general manager Chris Drury threw in the towel and announced the team would “retool.’’
With 78 games remaining, the Rangers say they are determined to not let the loss of Shesterkin torpedo their season. On Friday, captain J.T. Miller said “we’re not going to let it take the wind out of our sails.” On Saturday, coach Mike Sullivan said he is “not worried” that the Rangers will succumb to a “woe is me’’ attitude.
“We’re not looking for excuses,’’ Sullivan said. “We like what’s going on around here and we’re going to continue to work at becoming the best team that we can become.”
The thing is, Shesterkin’s injury, while certainly the biggest, isn’t the only one the Rangers are being forced to navigate right now.
Besides being without Korpisalo, they also announced that fourth-line center Joe Veleno, who had been an important penalty-killer in the first four games before suffering a lower-body injury last Sunday against the Utah Mammoth, will be out for at least three months. Someone is going to have to take over those duties.
Veleno was placed on long-term injured reserve, which allows the Rangers to exceed the $104 million salary cap by the amount of his $1.2 million salary, and forward Juuso Parssinen, who has been playing wing this season but has played center, was called up from Hartford.
Rookie Cole Beaudoin, 20, who had played two games since being called up from AHL Hartford on Tuesday to take Veleno’s spot on the roster, was returned to Hartford.
Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
