As we get more and more news about the ongoing contract negotiations with Igor Shesterkin, there’s sticker shock among Rangers fans about whether he’s worth an $11 million or higher cap hit. That’s fair, as it would be the largest goalie contract in history, and well deserved too. But with so many saying the money can be better spent elsewhere, can the Rangers win without Igor Shesterkin after this season?

Getting to a definitive answer requires understanding and traversing the multiverse, and until the MCU figures it out, I’m not going to try. But we can at least evaluate whether this sentiment holds value.

For starters, we’ve seen other teams win without a big time goalie. Vegas won with Adin Hill. Colorado won with Darcy Kuemper. That’s fair. But as mentioned in many other outlets, those teams were far, far deeper than the current iteration of the Rangers. Teams like Florida (Sergei Bobrosky) and Tampa (Andrei Vasilevskiy) had the bonus of elite goaltending plus deep rosters.

But elite goaltending has also carried teams that arguably shouldn’t have won the Stanley Cup. Braden Holtby’s .922 SV% carried a pretty mediocre Capitals team to a Cup. St. Louis got lights out goaltending from Jordan Binnington to carry them to a Cup. So goaltending does matter, and there’s enough evidence to support the need for a superstar goalie as well.

For the Rangers, we need to take a step back from Shesterkin himself and look at the rest of the roster. The Blueshirts are not a strong 5v5 team. They rely on counter attacks, aggression, and special teams for their offense. This style of hockey requires elite goaltending to keep the puck out of their net when their brand of offense fails on a play by play or period by period basis.

But the counter argument is the Rangers can use Shesterkin’s money to fill out the rest of the roster. Assuming the rest of the roster moves are unimpacted, that’s about $11.5 million in cap space.

The list is strong this coming offseason, with Mikko Rantanen and Mitch Marner headlining free agency with names like Brock Boeser and Carter Verhaeghe at the top as well. But those big names will eat almost all of that $11.5 million in savings, but the big missing piece is they’d also need to replace Shesterkin.

You know who the top UFA goalies are? Aside from Shesterkin and Linus Ullmark? Joey Daccord and David Rittich, at least based on SV%. After that, it’s guys like Adin Hill, Logan Thompson, and Charlie Lindgren. Lindgren seems to be a favorite, so let’s use him as the example. Evolving-Hockey has him projected at a $4.5 million cap hit.

That $11.5 million became $7 million real quick, didn’t it? That difference isn’t enough to land any of the 4 big names mentioned above. Remember, we are assuming everything else plays out the same, which means the Rangers still need to re-sign Alexis Lafreniere, K’Andre Miller, Will Cuylle, Zac Jones, Matt Rempe, and potentially Kaapo Kakko.

This is over 500 words to say one thing: The Rangers roster won’t change much with or without Shesterkin. So we are essentially figuring out what fits best for the Blueshirts. Is it Charlie Lindgren and a $6 million 2nd line winger? Or is it Igor Shesterkin and perhaps Gabe Perreault or Brennan Othmann?

To me, the answer is clearly Shesterkin and one of the kids.

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