The Rangers’ Goalie Is Adjusting to the Pressures of the Playoffs

He’s additionally one of many N.H.L.’s finest gamers at any place. He was named as one of many three finalists for the Hart Trophy for most precious participant throughout the common season and is sort of assured to be awarded the Vezina Trophy as one of the best goalie. All of the proof voters wanted was his .935 save proportion and a pair of.07 targets in opposition to common, each tops within the league.

Shesterkin, 26, was drafted out of Russia by the Rangers within the fourth spherical of the 2014 draft and has match seamlessly right into a line of Rangers goalies stretching again to the early Nineties with Mike Richter, who was adopted, two years after his personal retirement, by Henrik Lundqvist in 2005.

“What a run of goaltenders we have now seen right here with the Rangers,” mentioned Eddie Olczyk, a TNT analyst and teammate of Richter’s on the final Rangers’ group to win a Stanley Cup, in 1994. “Goaltending has not been an issue for the Rangers, and when you may have it, you may have an opportunity to win each night time.”

Olczyk mentioned he spoke to Gallant months in the past about Shesterkin, and the coach raved to him in regards to the goalie’s uncanny means to learn, react and be in the precise place forward of the shot or the move.

“I don’t suppose you hear that fairly often,” Olczyk mentioned. “He appears to know what’s going to occur earlier than it does. When that occurs, you’re enjoying five-card stud with six playing cards. It’s a fairly good hand to be enjoying with.”

Lundqvist was like that, too. He was nonetheless a Ranger when Shesterkin made his debut on Jan. 7, 2020. Shesterkin spoke little or no English then, and it was troublesome for Lundqvist to speak with him in an off-the-cuff, in-depth method to get a way of who Shesterkin was. However he observed that his new teammate was fairly relaxed and chatty with the opposite Russian-speaking gamers on the Rangers, comparable to Pavel Buchnevich and Vladislav Namestnikov, each of whom are not on the group.

Now a Rangers analyst on the MSG Community, Lundqvist mentioned Shesterkin’s easygoing demeanor was crucial to the Russian goalie’s means to resist strain and failure — what little of it he has had.