Rangers lose goalie Igor Shesterkin to leg injury vs. Capitals

Just when it looked as if everything was going their way, the Rangers’ worst nightmare came to pass Friday night.

Goalie Igor Shesterkin was helped off the ice in the middle of the second period of the visiting Blueshirts’ 3-1 loss to the Washington Capitals with an injury to his right lower leg. He did not return.

“Definitely not a good feeling for anyone seeing anyone on your team go down, especially a guy like that who’s kind of the pillar on the back end there,’’ defenseman Adam Fox said. “It sucks. Obviously, we’re hoping for the best for him.”

Coach Mike Sullivan had no update on Shesterkin after the game. “I don’t. Not yet,’’ he said.

Shesterkin, who was the NHL’s First Star of the Week after getting off to a fast start — including scoring his first professional goal and the first goal by a goalie in franchise history in the Rangers’ home opener against Tampa Bay last week — was in the middle of a penalty kill when he scrambled to get across his goal crease and appeared to jam his right skate into the goalpost.

He went down immediately, pounded the ice with his glove and was helped off the ice and to the dressing room with 11:40 left in the period with the score tied at 1.

“It’s awful,” captain J.T. Miller said. “It stinks. Obviously, it’s young — we don’t even know what’s going on. But to see him leave the game is a shock to all of us. But at the same time, it means we’ve got to step up, to a man, to try to get the job done, especially G [backup goalie Dylan Garand].’’

Garand replaced Shesterkin and allowed one goal on 12 shots. That turned out to be the deciding goal as the Rangers’ winning streak ended at four games.

Shesterkin took a 3-1 record, a 1.75 goals-against average and a .926 save percentage into Friday and had made 13 saves on 14 shots when he was injured.

His injury comes with backup goalie Joonas Korpisalo already out with a mysterious lower-body injury, leaving the Rangers dangerously thin at the goalie position.

Korpisalo, obtained in a trade with Boston on July 1, had been expected to replace the retired Jonathan Quick as Shesterkin’s backup. When he was injured, Garand was called up from AHL Hartford.

Garand started for the Rangers on Oct. 2 and shut out the Red Wings, 2-0. In three games at the end of last season, he went 2-0-1 with a 1.62 goals-against average and .948 save percentage.

If Shesterkin has to miss significant time, it will be a blow to a retooled Rangers team that had hoped to compete for a playoff spot this season and had won four of its first five games.

“Well, it’s concerning, obviously,’’ Sullivan said when asked about the prospect of being without Shesterkin for a while. “He’s an elite goaltender, and I mean you don’t ever want to see anybody get hurt, but obviously he’s an important player for us.”

With Korpisalo out, Garand will stand in as the No. 1 goaltender for now. What the Rangers have behind him is murky, though. Journeyman Spencer Martin currently is day-to-day in Hartford with a lower-body injury. That would leave 22-year-old Callum Tung as the next man up.

There’s also a possibility that the team will ask Quick, who currently is serving as the team’s director of goaltending development, to come out of retirement to help out for the short term.

Shesterkin, the Rangers’ best player, missed 13 games with a lower-body injury last season and his absence — along with that of Fox, who was injured in the same game — effectively killed whatever long-shot hopes the Blueshirts had of hanging around the playoff race.

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

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.