NEW YORK — Patrick Kane certainly took notice of Igor Shesterkin’s Vezina Trophy-winning season last year, even from the Western Conference. So Kane too noticed how Shesterkin was feeling when Kane arrived just under three weeks ago.
“When I first got here, he was saying he wasn’t on top of his game,” Kane said. “But he’s been unreal since I’ve been here. Pretty fun to watch. The way he gets over and pushes off, finds a way to get a body part on a shot. He’s so quick and acrobatic. He’s been special.”
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Even Shesterkin might finally agree. After an up-and-down — for him, anyway — season of alternately feeling good about his game and beating himself up, sometimes while surrounded by cameras and phones, Shesterkin has found a good groove, perhaps at the ideal time. His second shutout of the season Saturday, a 33-save gem against the Penguins in what was mostly a laugher, found Shesterkin in his ideal form.
Acrobatic and quick, as Kane said. There was a vintage Hasekian/Brodeurian save on Mikael Granlund in the third, a scorpion worthy of 1990s highlight reels, that was the cherry on top of a well-deserved shutout. There were other stops where he fought for his space and made it count. And even a gloved punch at Jason Zucker as the Penguins tried throughout to poke and whack at Shesterkin to get under his skin, even though feisty is another adjective that describes the Rangers’ most important player.
“I’m not a fighter,” he said after the game, laughing when asked whether he might do his best Jordan Binnington impression one night. Then he gave a shrug. “But maybe …”
Shesterkin also has a sly sense of humor that has been kept as tight as some of his self-assessments this season. He is a perfectionist and who can blame him? He nearly achieved it a season ago, posting one of just three goalie seasons of 50-plus starts with a .935 save percentage since the 1967 NHL expansion. So this season, with that in his rearview, has been difficult to manage.
Steve Valiquette, MSG analyst and co-host of The Athletic’s “Garden Faithful” podcast, saw recently that Shesterkin has made a technical change that’s helped during his recent strong run.
“His feet are closer together in his stance,” Valiquette said on the podcast earlier this week. “That, to me, is more important than anything else in a goalie’s game, because when you get too wide … We took some video from last season when Igor was at the height of his powers, and we measured his skates being a foot and a half, sometimes 2 feet, outside of stance from where he was last year. He was 2 feet wider in some instances, really wide this year.
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“The problem with getting too wide in your stance is you have a tendency to go down early. Because you’re really pressed on your inside edges, your knees are really close together, and when a guy comes in close enough and he starts to drag the puck you no longer can move right or left because you’re tight in your stance, you’re pressing on those edges of your blades.
“Last year, when he would have been closer with his feet together, he was able to move side to side and adjust his angle. He was faster and more explosive because he had more of that power underneath his shoulder to be able to move across the crease. He was better on rebounds last year. He’s got his feet back under him and he’s starting to look like himself again. He’s playing with that higher posture in his stance. When he plays too wide, it brings your shoulders down too a couple inches. There’s something there, he’s made that adjustment. That technical adjustment is really helping his mental (side).”
IGOR IN HIS SCORPION ERA pic.twitter.com/nZ0ZWiKABw
— New York Rangers (@NYRangers) March 19, 2023
Shesterkin’s last five games: 5-0-0, .942 save percentage, 1.76 goals-against. His season save percentage is up to .912, good enough for 10th among NHL starting goalies. There will be no Vezina this time around, but perhaps he is simply doing what great goalies do and getting into the right mental and technical space when the games are about to matter most.
“He knows what he’s capable of and he holds himself to the highest standard,” Vincent Trocheck said. “Nights like tonight are big for him, we want him to get as many of these as he can so his confidence is at an all-time high going into the playoffs.”
The gap between the Rangers with Shesterkin on his game and some other teams — say, the Penguins — was evident Saturday. Tristan Jarry wasn’t bad, but he didn’t bail his teammates out of some lackluster efforts at times as the Rangers scored four in the second, chasing Jarry and piling up some easily converted chances. Artemi Panarin had two goals, Kane had two assists as did K’Andre Miller, Mika Zibanejad had three points.
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The firepower is gaining traction with each game. That’s great, but there’s one Ranger who can be the biggest difference-maker. They were chanting his name in the closing minutes of a 6-0 laugher at the Garden on Saturday, showing that the savvy fans know who will be the one to take this team farthest in the postseason.
(Photo: Brad Penner / USA Today)
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