Igor Shesterkin’s brilliant play brought the Rangers victory over Arizona

One of the heroes of the next day of the NHL regular season was the Russian goalkeeper of the New York Rangers, Igor Shesterkin. The league’s best goaltender the season before last pulled out a tough 2-1 home win for his club over the Arizona Coyotes.

After this match, all Rangers hockey players who were asked questions about the game spoke about Igor Shesterkin. For them, she seemed to be associated primarily with him. And defender Jacob Trouba even found a beautiful definition to express his attitude towards the goalkeeper: “In his veins, in my opinion, the blood of a cold-blooded killer flows.” Truba meant, of course, how good Shesterkin can be in those moments when the team can, in fact, only count on him and when it seems that a goal is inevitable.

Igor Shesterkin turned into a key hockey player for the New York club quite a long time ago, and in 2022, giving one wonderful match after another, he won the prize for the best goalkeeper in the NHL following the results of the regular season. But the last season was not so clear-cut for Shesterkin – it seems that there were still much more great matches in his performance than mediocre ones. But this was not enough to qualify for the goalkeeper award, and most importantly, the Rangers, having strengthened the roster and added a huge dose of brightness to it, were still unable to fight for the Stanley Cup. He was cut in the first round of the playoffs by the New Jersey Devils.

Now the Rangers, having already parted with some of the stars they recruited for the cup campaign that didn’t really take place (Russian forward Vladimir Tarasenko, for example, went to the Ottawa Senators), but retained a very high-quality squad and invited experienced coach Peter Laviolette to manage it, again dreams of realizing his potential. And there are no experts who, when discussing his chances, would not make the remark that the realization of this potential is impossible without Shesterkin’s peak form: nevertheless, the club still has many mistakes in defense and the dashing style does not disappear anywhere. Actually, the same thing was said in a short remark by ESPN dedicated to the publication of its traditional ranking of the 100 best NHL hockey players, which coincided with the Rangers’ meeting against Arizona. In it, Igor Shesterkin found himself in the top 30, in 28th position.

And the match against Arizona was the perfect confirmation of the thesis. 26 reflected shots (that’s how many shots the Russian goalkeeper has after him) is not formally a gigantic number. But the details are important here. A significant portion of these throws were not just unpleasant, but deadly. Shesterkin had to perform feats constantly. And his performance in the final period can generally be considered a masterpiece. It started with the score 1:1, and it was terribly difficult for the Rangers in this twenty minutes. But thanks largely to Shesterkin, he, having earned two consecutive dismissals, fought back in a three-on-five minority, and five minutes before the siren, he retained his hard-won minimum lead, despite the fact that the guests, after Barclay Goodrow demolished Jason Zucker, received right to a free throw. Shesterkin dealt with it, strengthening his reputation as the king of shootouts. During regular time of matches in the NHL, four of them were assigned to his goal, and in all cases the Russian emerged victorious from the duel.

Alexey Dospehov