Igor Shesterkin was the Rangers’ best player in the playoffs and that is the way it will have to be if the club hopes to win the Stanley Cup in the foreseeable future.
That is what makes the star Russian netminder, who is eligible to become an unrestricted free agent at the end of next season, a priority for now instead of a priority for later.
The Rangers have eight players who are either UFAs or restricted free agents this summer, including three players who have been regular skaters for multiple years, but if Shesterkin’s performance this postseason said anything, it’s that he is absolutely vital to their Stanley Cup aspirations.
“I haven’t seen a series by a goaltender like that since Jose Theodore in 2002,” Panthers head coach Paul Maurice said Saturday night after his team advanced to the Stanley Cup Final for the second straight year with a 2-1 win over the Rangers. “He won the Hart Trophy that year.”
Shesterkin faced a whopping 524 shots in 16 playoff games, over which the Blueshirts were outshot in 13 of them.
He posted a .926 save percentage and a 2.34 goals-against average, keeping his team competitive on a game-to-game basis and even in contests they probably didn’t deserve to be within a goal of winning.
There’s reason to believe that Shesterkin’s camp is aiming for as high as $12 million a year, which would be a NHL record-setting cap hit for a goaltender.
On July 1, the Blueshirts are permitted to begin negotiating with the 2022 Vezina winner’s camp.
Carey Price’s eight-year deal with Montreal carries an average annual value of $10.5 million for a total value of $84 million, while Andrei Vasilevskiy’s contract with the Lightning has a cap hit of $9.5 million and a total value of $76 million.
Coincidentally, Shesterkin’s compatriot at the other end of the ice in the Rangers’ Eastern Conference Final loss, Sergei Bobrovsky, is the most notable comparable.
Bobrovsky is approaching the second-to-last season of a seven-year, $70 million deal with an AAV of $10 million.
The Rangers are no stranger to allocating a good portion of their funds to goaltending, after Henrik Lundqvist served as the club’s top player for a majority of his 15-year career.
From 2014-15 to 2019-20, before he was bought out at the end of 2020-21, Lundqvist carried a cap hit of $8.5 million.
With the cap ranging from $69 million to $81.5 million during that time, Lundqvist accounted for between 12.3 percent and 10.4 percent of the Rangers’ budget.
The cap is expected to be above $87 million next year and jump to the $92 million-$93 million range in two years.
If Shesterkin comes in at $12 million, that would represent roughly 13 percent of the cap and would diminish each year as it rises.
It’ll be interesting to see how director of goaltending Benoit Allaire’s decision to scale back his role with the organization influences negotiations with Shesterkin, who has sung the longtime goalie coach’s praises throughout his five seasons in New York.
Allaire, who just wrapped up his 20th year with the franchise, will no longer be the goalie coach on a day-to-day basis, but the 60-year-old will not only still be involved with all netminders, but he will play a major role in helping the team find his replacement.
The Islanders named Sergejs Naumovs the goalie coach of their AHL squad after he worked with their goalie, and Shesterkin’s buddy, Ilya Sorokin, for two seasons in the Kontinental Hockey League.
Naumovs will surely work with Sorokin during training camp.
Goaltending has been strong enough to give the Rangers a chance in the playoffs year after year.
It’s the rest of the team that needs reinforcements if they hope to clear that conference’s final hump in the near future.
The question of whether or not the Rangers will be able to do that while giving Shesterkin a contract he’s earned — and deserves — is yet to be seen.
“He’s been our best player ever since he put on a Rangers jersey,’’ Chris Kreider said. “We certainly wouldn’t be here without him.’’
