Rangers' Igor Shesterkin must reverse course for Blueshirts to be true Cup contenders
The Rangers' Shesterkin had a goals-against average of 2.86 and a save percentage of .899 at the All-Star break, a little off of his career numbers are 2.46 and .920. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The Rangers will be back at it Sunday, reassembling for practice as they prepare for the final 33 games of the regular season after their bye week and the NHL All-Star break. They will face the 32-14-3 Colorado Avalanche on Monday,
The Rangers hope that being off for a week will have refreshed them enough to get back to being the team they were at the start of the season. They won 18 of their first 23 games (18-4-1) but went 12-12-2 in their last 26 games before the break.
Where do the Rangers stand as far as being legitimate challengers to win the Stanley Cup this season?
Realistically, they are not among them.
That’s not to say that things can’t turn around before the playoffs begin. At this point, however, it seems unlikely, especially if goaltender Igor Shesterkin doesn’t find a way to reverse course on what easily has been the worst season of his professional career.
Shesterkin, an All-Star, had a goals-against average of 2.86 and a save percentage of .899 at the break. Entering this season, his career numbers were 2.37 and .924. Analytics-wise, his numbers are where they are expected to be, meaning he’s giving the Rangers exactly what he’s supposed to. But nothing more.
And they need more. A lot more.
It’s not all about Shesterkin, though. The Rangers need other things, too. With 4 1/2 weeks remaining before the March 8 trade deadline, they have obvious holes to fill if they are to be a Cup contender.
With the announcement last Sunday that Filip Chytil is done for the season, priority No. 1 for general manager Chris Drury is to trade for a center who can generate offense for the third line. That would take a little bit of pressure off Artemi Panarin and his linemates, All-Star Vincent Trocheck and Alexis Lafreniere, who have carried too much of the offensive load this season.
There was a report last week that said the Rangers were interested in trading for the Calgary Flames' Elias Lindholm before he was dealt to Vancouver late Wednesday night. The cost to acquire Lindholm — center Andrei Kuzmenko, two defense prospects and a first- and fourth-round draft pick — was steep. It’s hard to imagine the Rangers paying anything close to that to get the kind of help they’re looking for.
There also is the matter of finding someone to play right wing with Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider. Since he became the GM in 2021 and traded away Pavel Buchnevich that summer, Drury has been unable to find the proper right wing for the duo. He’s done well to acquire a couple of good fits at the trade deadline the past two seasons, rentals Frank Vatrano in 2022 and Vladimir Tarasenko last year, but the team was hoping fifth-year forward Kaapo Kakko would be the guy this season, and he hasn’t been.
Coach Peter Laviolette has twice dropped Kakko from the Kreider-Zibanejad line and replaced him with 37-year-old Blake Wheeler. Wheeler has looked OK in spurts there, but that line hasn’t been as dynamic as it’s supposed to be. Zibanejad had one goal in his last 14 games before the break, and of his 15 goals, only five came during five-on-five play.
Zibanejad, a player with a history of being hot-and-cold, needs to produce more at five-on-five. But someone, whether it is Wheeler, Kakko, or a player acquired via trade, is going to need to fill the right wing spot on that Kreider-Zibanejad line.
Unless, of course, Laviolette decides to split up Kreider and Zibanejad and try something completely different. That would seem extreme, but it’s always an option.
As for Kakko, what is to become of him? He’ll be 23 on Feb. 13, and for whatever reason, be it untimely injuries, poor prospect development by the organization or a lack of opportunity provided by the coaching staffs he’s played under, the No. 2 overall pick in 2019 hasn’t lived up to expectations.
Is it time to move on from him and start looking to the younger prospects in the organization, such as Brennan Othmann or 2023 first-round pick Gabe Perreault? Or is there still belief that Kakko can be a valuable piece for the team going forward?
There’s a lot for Drury to figure out before the trade deadline. Are the Rangers one or two pieces away from being a legitimate Stanley Cup contender, and if so, can he find those pieces? If the answers are maybe and yes, then how much will it cost to acquire them? And will it be worth paying that price?
And then there’s this reality to consider: If Shesterkin can’t find a way to turn his season around, will any of it even matter?
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.