Igor Shesterkin’s heroics carry Rangers to victory against Ottawa Senators
Igor Shesterkin put on a show for New York Rangers fans at Madison Square Garden on Friday night.
With his team’s offense continuing to struggle, Shesterkin continued his terrific early-season play by making 40 saves to lead the Rangers to a 2-1 victory over the Ottawa Senators.
Artemi Panarin put the Rangers ahead 3:03 into the game and Shesterkin stood on his head until Alexis Lafreniere added some insurance with a power-play goal at 2:56 of the third period, helping the Rangers improve to 7-0-0 when they score first and 7-2-1 overall.
“Shesty saved us a couple of times,” Lafreniere said. “We have to be better.”
Senators forward Adam Gaudette spoiled Shesterkin’s bid for his second shutout of the season when he scored his third goal in two games at 12:28 of the third period. But Ottawa couldn’t beat Shesterkin again despite outshooting the Rangers 20-5 in the third period and 41-18 for the game.
“Everybody’s sitting there on the bench just praying that he somehow makes another one of those saves, and he just keeps doing it,” said defenseman K’Andre Miller, who shared the team lead with four blocked shots. “Obviously, we’d like to clean up our defense a little bit, but we love who we’ve got back there.”
As he was in the 5-3 road loss to the Washington Capitals on Tuesday, when the Rangers were outshot 46-19, Shesterkin was the best Ranger on the ice. Ottawa had a boatload of Grade A chances and attempted 89 shots to 34 for the Rangers, but the couldn’t get anything past No. 31 despite having five power plays until Gaudette scored on his team’s 34th shot on goal.
“Igor was fantastic tonight,” coach Peter Laviolette said. “He made a lot of big saves.”
So what was the difference between this game and the loss on Tuesday? Shesterkin’s answer was simple: “The score.”
The Russian goalie also also downplayed his own performance.
“It was an important two points for us,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who played good or bad.”
The Senators came out attacking and had a couple of excellent chances in the first couple of minutes, including a deflection by Mike Amadio at 1:43 that hit the post to Shesterkin’s left and stayed out. Shesterkin also denied Tim Stutzle’s wide-open wrister from the slot less than a minute later.
The Rangers hadn’t generated a shot on goal until Panarin capitalized on a terrific play by Lafreniere to open the scoring. Lafreniere took the puck away from Ottawa’s Josh Norris along the right-wing wall and slid it to Panarin, who used defenseman Travis Hamonic as a screen and ripped a wrist shot that beat Linus Ullmark cleanly.
New York outshot Ottawa 9-8 in the first period, but Shesterkin faced the tougher chances as well as the only power play. Ottawa hurt itself by misfiring on a couple of golden opportunities after the Rangers gave away the puck in their own zone.
Shesterkin’s heroics carry Rangers past Ottawa Senators
The second period belonged entirely to Shesterkin.
The Senators outshot the Rangers 13-4 in the second period and controlled play throughout. They did everything but score — because of Shesterkin. He was the biggest reason New York killed three power plays, but his best stop came with 2:50 left and the teams playing at full strength when he left Ottawa’s Claude Giroux shaking his head after a spectacular glove save on a wide-open shot from the left circle.
Ottawa outshot the Rangers 20-13 through two periods, but the shot attempts (54-25) were far more indicative of the play through 40 minutes.
“I liked the first period. I thought we were on point there. I didn’t like our second period at all,; I thought we stopped skating and gave them too many chances,” Laviolette said.
The power play finally gave Shesterkin a little breathing room at 2:56 of the third period when Lafreniere went to the net and tapped Filip Chytil’s pass behind Ullmark. That goal proved to be the game-winner when Gaudette converted a pass from Brady Tkachuk to cut the margin to 2-1.
The Rangers are home again for a Sunday afternoon game against the archrival Islanders, who are likely to be without injured forward Mathew Barzal.
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