Igor Shesterkin had some big-stage experience under his belt by the time he reached Broadway. So it’s no wonder he’s up to speed so quickly. With the Rangers’ rebuild complete, he’s now ready to take up the King’s mantle as a top NHL stopper.
By: Matt Larkin
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The play was an oxymoron on ice, heart-stopping yet…routine.
On the one hand, what Igor Shesterkin did that night in October was spectacular. Deep into a bananas 3-on-3 overtime between his New York Rangers and the Toronto Maple Leafs, which looked as frenetic and random as online “versus” play in a video game, Shesterkin got caught out of his net on a weak clearing attempt. He stopped one chance while tending goal from the faceoff circle, then glided back to his net in time to rob superstar Auston Matthews alone in the slot on a cross-ice pass to a chorus of gasps at Scotiabank Arena. The sequence was breathtaking, but it was also something the Rangers have come to expect from their emerging star goaltender.
That scintillating play against the Leafs, you see, wasn’t really a scramble. The word “scramble” conjures images of a goalie flailing his limbs in desperation. Shesterkin, however, moved so smoothly that it looked like he was on wheels. “You watch that sequence again and tell me that’s not the best-moving goalie in the league right now,” said goaltending consultant and MSG Rangers analyst Steve Valiquette.
Shortly after Shesterkin’s wild save sequence that night, the Rangers scored to win a game in which they were outshot 41-23, including 17-2 in the second period. Was it a career highlight game for Shesterkin? Nah, not really. It was more or less what he’s done since debuting in 2019-20. He consistently delivers Herculean efforts as the Rangers struggle to stop teams from peppering him. “That’s what he does for a team,” said Rangers coach Gerard Gallant. “When a team doesn’t show up for a period, he keeps you in the game.”
Shesterkin’s career sample size, which remains modest but is roughly the equivalent of one full season for an NHL No. 1, spans 55 games and 51 starts at press time. Over that span, 70 goaltenders have logged at least 1,000 minutes at 5-on-5. Among that group, Shesterkin faces the fifth-most shots per 60, seventh-most high-danger shots per 60 and 18th-closest average shot distance. His expected goals against per 60, a stat approximating the difficulty of a goalie’s workload, ranks 11th-highest. Yet Shesterkin owns the fifth-best goals saved above average per 60 over that span, including by far the best high-danger save percentage. So, essentially, Shesterkin’s career profile to date is “gets shelled, yet plays out of his mind.” He’s been that good.
THAT'S WHAT HE DOES. WHEN A TEAM DOESN'T SHOW UP FOR A PERIOD, HE KEEPS YOU IN THE GAME– RANGERS COACH GERARD GALLANT
His play in big moments seems to be contagious and makes his teammates “answer up,” as center Mika Zibanejad puts it. “He has his flash saves sometimes, but I feel like he’s always in the right spot,” Zibanejad said. “He’s calm, and that spreads throughout the team.”
The 25-year-old Shesterkin behaves like a finished product, wowing with his poise and technique despite his relative inexperience at the highest level. What made him this way?
The mental fortitude comes from his family. Shesterkin learned that pro-style poise in childhood because he had an elite athlete in his house. His father, Oleg, played professional soccer in Russia. “My family helped me a lot when I started,” Shesterkin said, speaking through an interpreter. “My father always assisted me with his experience and valuable advice because he has already been through it.”
With a soccer-playing dad, naturally, Shesterkin was as drawn toward that sport as he was hockey as a kid. As he remembers it, he adored playing all team sports growing up. Perhaps being so versatile in his physical activity helped shape him into the athletic goaltender he is today. A good comparison would be the Los Angeles Kings’ Jonathan Quick, arguably the most athletic goaltender of his generation and someone who was also somewhat undersized for the position. Quick, who didn’t focus exclusively on hockey until 17, passionately champions the importance of playing multiple sports to avoid subjecting the body to too much repetition, as he told The Hockey News a few years ago. That’s how the multi-sport athlete Shesterkin was raised, too. He jokes he “didn’t always want to be a goalie” and dreamed of playing on a pitch instead of on ice at times, but he simply wasn’t as good of a soccer player as he was a goaltender. He still dabbles in recreational soccer during the off-season when he’s not prioritizing hockey, however.
On top of having a father who understood the pressures of pro athletics and helped foster a multi-sport environment, Shesterkin had the unique privilege of playing alongside his idol.
While he followed Dominik Hasek a lot as a kid, Shesterkin eventually gravitated toward Henrik Lundqvist, who won a Vezina Trophy with the Rangers and will be a shoo-in Hall of Famer in 2023. Lundqvist, who played deep in his net and relied on fantastic reflexes to be effective, was an ideal model for Shesterkin to study. Doing so made Shesterkin a Rangers fan, so it was a dream come true when New York drafted him 118th overall in 2014.
Lundqvist was at the peak of his powers then, literally weeks removed from helping the Blueshirts reach the Cup final. By the time Shesterkin broke through to the NHL in early 2020, Lundqvist was still there, battling through the final days of his career. It was a surreal experience for Shesterkin to work with him. “As a child I was inspired by Henrik Lundqvist,” Shesterkin said. “I watched his games very often and admired his skill, so it was an invaluable experience to meet him, watch him working and learn from him.”
Great role models have helped make Shesterkin mentally strong. He also lists Lego as his favorite hobby, so concentration obviously isn’t a problem, either. But it is Shesterkin’s fluidity in game situations that makes goalie analysts like Valiquette swoon. What’s so good about it? Ask around and most of the answers focus on Shesterkin’s lightning-quick movement, which makes sense given Shesterkin is one of the smaller starting netminders in the league at 6-foot-1 and 189 pounds. As Shesterkin puts it, “I’m not a tall goalie, so I need to focus on speed.” Much of the off-season work he does – “special training,” he calls it, without revealing any more secrets – is geared toward achieving and maintaining the quickness advantage he holds over most, if not all, goalies in the league.
AS A CHILD, I WAS INSPIRED BY HENRIK LUNDQVIST. IT WAS AN INVALUABLE EXPERIENCE TO MEET HIM, WATCH HIM WORKING AND LEARN FROM HIM– IGOR SHESTERKIN
Gallant got fired by the Vegas Golden Knights a week after Shesterkin made his NHL debut in January 2020, and therefore didn’t get a close look at Shesterkin before taking over as Rangers coach for this season. But Gallant, now seeing Shesterkin stop pucks daily, is awestruck by his seemingly lubricated movement in the crease. “Just his athleticism,” Gallant said. “He’s strong, plays hard every puck. I haven’t seen him move very much (before this season), but just the way he moves in the net, he’s always square to the puck.”
Valiquette points out that, last season, Shesterkin had the best save percentage in the league on breakaways and rebounds. So the movement is obviously crucial to Shesterkin’s success. Valiquette believes it comes not just from raw athleticism but also repetition. In his mind, goalies need 200 games or so at the lower pro levels, whether it’s the AHL or somewhere in Europe, before learning to move laterally at an NHL grade.
A goalie can have the technique, training, size and raw talent, but the repetition adds another crucial skill: tracking. Getting more games in helps a goalie learn to follow a play east to west, Valiquette says. To him, Shesterkin is Exhibit A of the correct developmental pace. He was an experienced pro who’d played on a KHL-champion team by the time he reached the Rangers in January 2020.
Shesterkin had logged 133 games in the KHL, 25 games in the AHL and 33 games in the VHL, Russia’s second-tier league. Add that together and you get 191 games. Hey, close enough. All that extra time spent honing his puck-tracking skills might explain why Shesterkin has emerged as arguably the league’s best goalie against 10-bell chances, from breakaways to those 3-on-3 overtime circuses.
Could we take it a step further and call him the best goaltender against all chances, i.e., best goaltender, period? It’s a bit early for that, given the sample size and his lack of high-stakes NHL game action. But Valiquette believes Shesterkin can be a Vezina finalist as early as this season. He’s shown he doesn’t need a stalwart (or even a league-average) defense in front of him to be dominant – some goaltenders even prefer action-packed games to keep their rhythm. But, if the Rangers improve in all facets of the game and Shesterkin starts padding his surface stats with wins, well, we all know how Vezina voters, a.k.a. NHL GMs, tend to be swayed by Ws above all else.
The wins won’t just mean individual accolades, of course. They could push the Rangers toward the Cup contention their ownership craves. The letter the front office sent to the team’s fans in 2018 promised a youth-oriented rebuild, and while it’s true the Rangers have stacked the cupboard with first-round picks and lottery victories in the past five drafts, they also supplemented those acquisitions with a trade for defenseman Jacob Trouba and a massive contract for free-agent left winger Artemi Panarin, upping the urgency meter by 2019-20.
Owner James Dolan evidently ran out of patience by spring 2021, axing GM Jeff Gorton. His replacement, Chris Drury, went to work fortifying the Rangers with hardnosed veterans, from Barclay Goodrow to Ryan Reaves, to make the team harder to play against. Shesterkin, then, has the most balanced team in front of him he’s seen so far in his career. He could soon find himself playing deep into the spring.
It’s obviously too soon to crown Shesterkin the new, ahem, King in New York. But no goalie elevates his team more than Shesterkin does. He’s a star already and, with the team around him improving, it may not be long before we talk him up as a top-three goalie on the planet.