Rangers will need more than Igor Shesterkin to make the playoffs
Igor Shesterkin of the New York Rangers during the national anthem before the game against the Pittsburgh Penguins at PPG PAINTS Arena on February 23, 2025. Credit: Getty Images
A hot goalie sometimes can carry a team to a playoff series win seemingly by himself. But asking him to carry his team for 25 games over the next 7 1⁄2 weeks just to get them into the playoffs? Well, that’s probably asking too much.
Surely, if Igor Shesterkin plays the rest of the season the way he did on Sunday, when he made 36 saves — many of them spectacular — to steal a 5-3 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Rangers will get into the playoffs. His next test is Tuesday night against the Islanders at UBS Arena.
But 1) there’s no way Shesterkin can play that well every night, and 2) even if he does and they do get into the postseason, they won’t last very long.
“We’ve got to play better,’’ coach Peter Laviolette said after Sunday’s win, which pulled the Rangers within two points of a playoff spot. “I thought the guys, in the third period, did what we needed to do, but just from a 60-minute standpoint, we’ve got to play better.’’
A year ago, the Rangers won the Presidents’ Trophy by compiling the best record in the regular season and reached the Eastern Conference finals, lasting six games against eventual Stanley Cup champion Florida. But they clearly aren’t the same team this season. They’re no longer elite. And right now, they’re not Stanley Cup contenders.
And realistically, if general manager Chris Drury doesn’t think the team can compete for the Cup this year, he might not try to bring in roster reinforcements at the March 7 trade deadline. So what we’re seeing now might be what we’ll be seeing the rest of the season.
The Rangers returned from the NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off break three points out of a playoff spot with back-to-back road games against the last-in-the-East Buffalo Sabres and the still-barely-in-it-but-fading-fast Penguins. They lost to Buffalo, 8-2, and the next day in Pittsburgh, despite leading 2-1 going into the third, they were outshot 31-9 in the first two periods.
“Everything was going wrong,’’ defenseman Ryan Lindgren said of Sunday’s second period, in which they were pinned in their own end for nearly the whole period and outshot 19-4. “[The Penguins] were winning all the battles. Every time we did get the puck, we weren’t getting it out.
“It was awful. We were in the ‘D’ zone the entire time. We were giving them chance after chance. Everything about it was awful.’’
In a tightly packed field of nine teams vying for two wild-card spots, the Rangers (28-25-4, 60 points) are two points behind Ottawa, which currently holds the second and final wild-card spot by tiebreaker over Columbus, and four behind Detroit, which holds the first wild card.
Having Shesterkin in net gives the Rangers an advantage over most of their wild-card competitors because when he’s on, he gives them a chance to beat anybody any night.
But they had better not be counting on him to play every game the way he did Sunday. Because if their plan is to continue to play poorly and hope Shesterkin erases all of their mistakes, that’s a foolhardy plan.
Othmann called up
With uncertainty about Chris Kreider’s status after an upper-body injury kept him out of Sunday’s game, the Rangers called up forward Brennan Othmann from AHL Hartford. They also recalled defenseman Zac Jones from his conditioning assignment at Hartford and returned defenseman Matthew Robertson 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.
