Dennis Schneidler-Imagn ImagesBoth Adam Fox and Igor Shesterkin appear to be inching toward a return to the New York Rangers’ lineup sooner rather than later.
The two cornerstone franchise pieces have been out since suffering their own respective lower-body injuries on Jan. 5 in a game against the Utah Mammoth.
It was unclear when Fox stained this apparent injury, as he played the entirety of the contest, aside from the overtime frame, which ended in just over a minute after Sean Durzi’s goal.
Fox was placed on long-term injured reserve the next day. He had only played in three games prior to Jan. 5 after missing the previous 14 games due to an upper-body injury that also landed him on LTIR.
When Shesterkin was lying on the ice in agony for over a minute and made his way to the locker room with the help of a trainer, unable to put any weight on his leg in that very same matchup against Utah, everybody feared for the worst.
Despite being placed on injured reserve, Emily Kaplan of ESPN quickly reported that the worst-case scenario regarding Shesterkin’s injury was avoided.
On Monday, Mike Sullivan provided a positive update on the progress Fox and Shesterkin have been making as of late.
“Both of those guys have been skating,” Mike Sullivan said. “They've had a handful of skates to this point so far, which obviously suggests that they're making significant progress. They have not joined the team to this point. That would be the next step, but certainly they're on the ice, and they've had a handful of skates at this point.”
They’ve both missed the past eight games, with their specific return date still unclear.
Fox is not eligible to return until Jan. 29, when the Rangers take on the New York Islanders, by rules of LTIR, while Shesterkin is already eligible to be activated off of injured reserve.