2026 Rangers Report Card: Igor Shesterkin

This article is part of an ongoing series of Rangers Report Cards, grading the performance of each member of the 2025-26 New York Rangers. To view more report cards in this series, go here.

To read the Season Preview for Igor Shesterkin, go here.

$11.5M.

That's how I opened my September preview of Igor Shesterkin.

That number—Igor Shesterkin's annual salary, and the price tag that accompanies being the highest-paid goaltender in hockey—was meant to be self-explanatory.

Seven months later, with a lower-body injury in the rearview mirror, a retool underway, and a team that struggled mightily both with and without him in net, I think it's safe to say that I was correct about the big picture, but I was sadly wrong about virtually everything else. 

Over the course of the 2025-2026 season, Igor Shesterkin somehow managed to post 3.54 wins above replacement and 21.3 goals saved above expected on a roster that was largely unable to play hockey in front of him, near him, or—on seven separate occasions—to score a single goal to even remotely help him out.

Igor was the safety net, the parachute, and the emotional support animal that I said he would be in September.

He just happened to be all three, on a plane careening into the side of a mountain.

Expectations

Let's revisit my September predictions in all their naively optimistic glory.

I penciled in Shesterkin for 40 wins and eight shutouts, arguing that a revamped blue line headed by Vladislav Gavrikov and Scott Morrow, the latter of whom was freshly acquired in the trade which sent K’Andre Miller to Carolina, would “greatly reduce Igor’s workload.”

I also wrote that Shesterkin would finally score a goal, and I predicted that the Rangers would be returning to the playoffs because, and I quote, “Igor Shesterkin is still Igor Shesterkin.”

Let's check the scorecard on those, shall we?

Forty wins? He had 25 in 51 starts because a lower-body injury suffered against the Utah Mammoth erased 13 games from his season, and the Rangers' offense spent a majority of the year cosplaying as a beer league team that forgot to stretch.

Eight shutouts? Try one—a gorgeous 37-save blanking of Buffalo on Oct. 9, and that was it, because it's hard to post shutouts when your own team gets shut out nine times.

Scores a goal? Not in this climate, friend.

The Rangers “almost certainly” make the playoffs? They were eliminated on March 25 after a 4-3 loss to Toronto, spending the majority of this season anchored to the bottom of the Eastern Conference.

I was so far off on that one, I need a telescope to see where the prediction landed.

But, here’s the callback that actually matters: I wrote that anyone who thought Igor was the problem during his 2024-25 campaign should “visit your local ophthalmologist,” because it was clear to me that “your peepers ain’t peeping right.”

And that was absolutely dead on.

The Rangers’ defense wasn’t just the problem last year; it’s remained the biggest problem throughout the 2025-26 season, retool notwithstanding. Igor was the one Ranger to not yield any worry from me, and he was the one Ranger who validated that faith, even when it looked like everything around him was disintegrating like wet tissue paper. 

The mixed verdict on my September preview: I nailed the thesis, and then I totally whiffed on every specific number attached to it. Classic Snark!

Performance

51 GP | 25-19-6 | .912 SV% | 2.50 GAA | 1 SO

Igor Shesterkin's 2025-26 season is a story told in three acts, and each one deserves its own treatment. This is the franchise player, and I will not short-change him.

Act One: Oct. 7–Jan. 5

The first thing to know about Igor Shesterkin's 2025-26 season is that it started with a shutout loss. On Oct. 7 against Pittsburgh, Igor stopped 28 of 29 shots for a .966 save percentage, and the Rangers scored zero goals, losing 3-0 to the Penguins.

Two nights later, up in Buffalo, Shesterkin was perfect—37 shots, 37 saves. It’s the only shutout Shesterkin posted all season and his 22nd career shutout, which moved him past Lorne Chabot for eighth in Rangers franchise history.

Late October was brutal. He allowed six goals in an overtime loss to San Jose on Oct. 23 and five more in a blowout loss to Calgary three days later. Those starts were by far the two worst starts of his pre-injury stretch, and they were sandwiched between competent outings where the team, yet again, simply didn't score. 

By the time November arrived, the pattern was firmly established: Igor Shesterkin would make saves, the Rangers would not score goals, and losses would get logged in as just another entry in one of the more dispiriting team-wide offensive performances in recent franchise history.

November brought his most consistent stretch. Shesterkin was 6-4-1 across 11 starts, highlighted by a 36-save effort in a win over Carolina on Nov. 26 and back-to-back wins over Nashville and Tampa Bay. 

December continued in a similar fashion—steady, professional, largely wasted. 

His best performance of the month came on Dec. 6 against Colorado, wherein he stopped 39 of 42 shots in an overtime loss. Through his first 34 games pre-injury, Shesterkin had a 17-12-4 record, 2.45 GAA, and .913 save percentage. Over his final six starts before going down, he was even better: 4-1-1, 2.04 GAA, .934 save percentage.

The pre-injury crescendo was on Jan. 2 at LoanDepot Park in Miami, where Igor stopped 36 of 37 shots in a 5-1 win for a .973 save percentage, the best single-game mark of the year for Igor up to that point. Mike Sullivan called it a "huge game" heading into 2026.

Three days later, back in New York, it would briefly come to an end.

On Jan. 5 against Utah at Madison Square Garden, Mammoth forward JJ Peterka drove to the net and made minimal, if any, contact with Shesterkin in the crease. Shesterkin was in a split stance when his left leg bent awkwardly. He fell backward, slamming his blocker on the ice in visible agony. 

Head athletic trainer Andy Hosler tended to him for over a minute, and, ultimately, Igor put minimal weight on his left leg and was helped off the ice by both Vladislav Gavrikov and the Rangers' training staff. He did not get a decision. He did not return.

After the game, head coach Mike Sullivan told reporters, “When you lose a player like that for any length of time, those types of players are difficult to replace."

They were not replaced. Vincent Trocheck said it plainly: "It's brutal. You never want to see a guy go down, especially when it's your goaltender, who is world-class."

Act Two: Jan. 5–Feb. 25

After his injury against the Mammoth, Igor Shesterkin missed 13 games.

Without him, and with Adam Fox simultaneously on LTIR with his own lower-body injury from the same game, Jonathan Quick inherited the crease and went on a 1-8-0 stretch, which included being pulled in a 10-2 blowout loss to Boston on Jan. 10 and an 8-4 loss to Ottawa on Jan. 14.

The Rangers went 2-11-2 without both Shesterkin and Fox. On Jan. 16, Chris Drury issued his retool letter to Rangers fans, with the organization formally acknowledging what NHL standings had been screaming for weeks. On Feb. 4, Artemi Panarin was traded to the Los Angeles Kings in exchange for prospect Liam Greentree, a conditional 2026 third-round pick, and a conditional 2028 fourth-round pick, with the Rangers retaining 50 percent of his salary. Two days later, the NHL paused for the 2026 Milan Olympics. The league resumed Feb. 26, the same day Shesterkin returned to the crease.

In the span of seven weeks, the Rangers lost their starting goaltender, their best forward, and whatever remained of their playoff hopes, in that order.

Act Three: Feb. 26–April 15

He returned on Feb. 26 in an overtime loss against Philadelphia, allowing three goals on 24 shots. Not the return anyone scripted. But he found his footing quickly with wins over Pittsburgh, Toronto, Philadelphia, Winnipeg, and Minnesota, followed by the signature game of his season on March 14 in Saint Paul.

The Rangers were outshot 48-18 by the Minnesota Wild. Shesterkin stopped 46 of 48 shots, including 21 saves in the third period alone, for a .958 save percentage and a 4-2 win. Joel Eriksson Ek bumped him in the crease and triggered a line brawl. Gavrikov, who had helped Shesterkin off the ice back in January, had a different message this time: "Not anyone in the league is allowed to touch him." Sullivan called it afterward and did not mince words:

"I think we have one of the elite goalies in the game and he makes timely saves for us, and he makes it look easy."

It did not look easy for long. In losses to Los Angeles, Columbus, Ottawa, and Toronto, he produced a combined .887 save percentage. On March 23 against Ottawa, Shesterkin made 31 saves while the Rangers managed only 10 shots on goal. He lost 2-1. On March 25 in Toronto, the Rangers were eliminated from playoff contention with a 4-3 loss. Shesterkin stopped just 14 of 18 shots. John Tavares scored the winner. The Rangers actually outshot Toronto 43-18 and rallied from three goals down, but sadly, it wasn't enough.

From there, it was a mixed bag for Shesterkin, as he picked up back-to-back wins over both the Florida Panthers and New Jersey Devils. The latter of which gave us what I feel was the highlight of the season, when Igor decided to drop the gloves for the first time in his career, and fight New Jersey goaltender Jacob Markstrom.

Shesterkin would only pick up one more win on the season, in a blowout victory over the Washington Capitals, yet he'd see three more losses to Montreal, Buffalo, and Dallas, the latter two seeing the Rangers outscored by a margin of 7-3. Igor wouldn't see the ice again after the loss in the Lone Star State, with Jonathan Quick and Dylan Garand splitting the last two games of the season.

Grade

Author's Grade: B

Banter Consensus: A-

In a vacuum, this is a B+ season bordering on A-. A .912 save percentage and 21.3 goals saved above expected behind the last-place team in the Eastern Conference is not just good. It is heroic.

If I were grading solely on what Shesterkin could control—how he tracked pucks, how he competed on every shot, how he stole games from teams that had no business losing them—this grade would be higher. The 46-save performance in Minnesota alone would be worth half a letter grade in any other season.

But I am not grading in a vacuum, and neither was the season. The lower-body injury cost him 13 games and cost the Rangers whatever slim playoff pulse they had remaining. The late-season fade, with four consecutive losses to close the competitive portion of the schedule, including a .778 save percentage in the elimination game, mars an otherwise sterling body of work. And the single shutout, while entirely a product of the team's inability to defend and score simultaneously, still stings when I remember I incorrectly predicted eight.

The B is earned. It respects the elite-level performance. It acknowledges the injury and the organizational collapse that surrounded him.

And it recognizes that the grade undersells how good he actually was—a fact that the raw numbers, untethered from context, cannot fully capture.

He enters next season as the cornerstone of a franchise in transition, at 30 years old, under contract through 2032-33 at $11.5 million per year. The retool means the early years of this extension will produce more development than hardware. But the foundation is unmistakable.

When asked about young players emerging, Shesterkin was direct: "I knew that they were amazing. They just needed time for that. Right now, they are showing everything."

Igor Shesterkin is still Igor Shesterkin. I got that one right.