Why reeling Rangers can’t rely on reinforcements any time soon
It appears that what you see is what you get with the New York Rangers banged-up roster. Barring any unforeseen trades, the Rangers can’t rely on any of their injured players returning in the near future.
Coach Mike Sullivan said that none of a group of injured Rangers, including goalie Igor Shesterkin, defenseman Adam Fox, and forwards Adam Edstrom and Conor Sheary, resumed skating yet.
When pressed with a follow-up question about whether anyone from that group could get back on the ice anytime soon — say in the next week or two — the Rangers coach was non-committal, but didn’t sound optimistic.
“I’d have to check on more specific details because I’m not exactly privy to exactly when they’re going on the ice, but I think they’re a little bit further away,” Sullivan said Tuesday after practice.
Though not framed as such, this appeared to be more a question about Shesterkin, since he’s the only one of those four players not on long-term injured reserve. The 30-year-old goalie landed on IR with a scary-looking lower-body injury last week and is eligible to be activated Wednesday. Of course, no one expected that he’d return that soon, but Sullivan’s comments made it clear Shesterkin’s still a ways off, even if not on LTIR.
Though not unexpected, that isn’t great news for the Rangers (20-21-6). They lost four straight games (0-3-1), including 3-2 in overtime to the Utah Mammoth last Monday, when Shesterkin departed in the first period. New York owns the worst points percentage in the 16-team Eastern Conference and is in danger of dropping out of the playoff race sooner rather than later.
In the past three games with Jonathan Quick starting, the Rangers allowed 19 goals, including 10 in an embarrassing loss to the Boston Bruins this past weekend. Sullivan pulled Quick after he allowed six goals in that one, and journeyman backup Spencer Martin surrendered the final four goals.
With Quick turning 40 this month, and Shesterkin’s return not on the near horizon, Sullivan admitted that managing the veteran goalie’s workload is a concern.
“It’s just another challenge,” the coach explained. “I’ve talked with ‘Quickie’ about what our intentions are here going through this process. And he’s really embraced the challenge in front of him. … We’re going to feel this out, some of it’s going to be intuition with what we see. We want to set Quickie up for success, and we don’t want to give him a workload where it becomes diminishing returns and you get a lesser version of the player because of it. That’s something we’re going to have to watch.”
Rangers trying to overcome injuries to key players
As for the other injured Rangers, Fox has a lower-body injury and isn’t legible to come off LTIR until the end of January; Edstrom remains out with a lower-body injury sustained in late November; and Sheary was seen on crutches at the 2026 Winter Classic after he sustained a lower-body injury against the Washington Capitals on New Years Eve.
In addition, the Rangers scratched Matt Rempe for their 4-2 loss to the Seattle Kraken on Monday because his thumb didn’t fully heal before he returned from LTIR on Dec. 15, and it’s affected his play on the ice.
Captain J.T. Miller doesn’t look 100 percent either after he recently returned from a seven-game injury absence. And it didn’t help that he got steamrolled in an accidental collision with teammate Braden Schneider on Monday.
“These guys want to play, they want to be in the lineup,” Sullivan explained. “The challenge is, when guys are working through injuries like that, is to figure out where they’re at and whether they can make an impact in a positive way.”
