Igor Shesterkin was the subject of many in-season ramblings and irrational takes after he signed his monster contract last season. But a season review isn’t about the contract he signed, especially since he was still on his old contract last season. It’s about how he looked on the ice and whether he did enough as the best and most important Rangers player. It’s easy to look at how the season went and say he didn’t do enough, but how much of those issues truly fall on the goalie?
Starting with Igor Shesterkin‘s numbers, people will look at his .905 SV% and his 2.86 GAA–the worst single season numbers of his career–and state his season was an objective failure. Naturally there’s more to the numbers than meets the eye, but on the surface those aren’t good numbers and were in the bottom-third of the NHL’s starters.
GAA isn’t the best stat for goalies because so much is team dependent, and SV% doesn’t take into account the quality of chances he faced. For that, we need to look at some more advanced numbers. Evolving-Hockey had his GSAx (goals saved above expected) at 28.59 in all strengths, which was 6th in the NHL last season, but 5th among true workhorse starters with 3,000 minutes. When it comes to expected goals against, which factors in shot type, quality, location, and distance from the net, Shesterkin faced the 2nd most difficult workload at 197.49 xGA.
Shesterkin faced the 2nd-worst average shot distance of 34.56 (Alex Georgiev was worst at 33.88). The fact he came out of last season with a raw SV% over .900 is a miracle. The analysis is simple. Igor Shesterkin’s raw numbers weren’t great, but he was under siege almost every game. This was easily the worst defensive team in front of Shesterkin, but he also didn’t necessarily play up to prior years. Notably, he struggled with shots from the high slot, an area the Rangers were essentially gifting to opponents on a nightly basis.
Last season put a lot of focus on the locker room impact, and it’s truly unknown how vocal Igor Shesterkin is in the locker room and how much influence he has as a leader. He will most likely wind up as a leader in the locker room, much in the same vein as Henrik Lundqvist, but I don’t believe he was a key cog in that leadership group last season. Probably for the better.
Igor Shesterkin is the most important Ranger, but current and future. His enormous contract, which takes effect this season, will be used as an evaluation tool going forward. He’s worth every penny, especially when you look at other goalie contracts and compare body of work to Shesterkin. Shesterkin is a top-three goalie in the NHL, full stop. There’s only so much a goalie can do when the rest of the team folded around him.
As an aside, unrelated to this season’s report card, Igor Shesterkin gets paid for what he does in the postseason. His .928 SV% over 44 playoff games is among the best. That jumps to .935 SV% in elimination games, per Stat Muse, which is Lundqvist-esque.
2024-2024 Igor Shesterkin report card grade: B+
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