Colin Stephenson: Watching Rangers a little more fun with return of Igor Shesterkin, Adam Fox
The Rangers' Igor Shesterkin and Adam Fox at Madison Square Garden on May 7, 2024. Credit: Getty Images/Bruce Bennett
Madison Square Garden and the Rangers took time to honor their gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympians, J.T. Miller and Vincent Trocheck, and coach Mike Sullivan and assistant coach David Quinn, before the team resumed its season Thursday night at the Garden.
Then came the hard part: They had to play the game.
After the high of winning the gold medal for their country, Miller, Trocheck, and the coaches had to find a way to get motivated for a regular-season game against the Flyers, who were 25-21-11 entering Thursday, 11 points ahead of the Rangers (22-29-6) in the standings, but still eight points out of the nearest wild card spot. Going in, this didn’t exactly profile as a high-stakes game.
And there are 24 more games left to get up for after that one.
“This is the part where we're professionals, and have a job to do,’’ Miller said upon returning to practice with the team Wednesday. “And we’d like to change the narrative around the last six weeks of this season. I mean, I think we get a lot of bodies back, get more of our team looking like it was the start of the season. I just think it's imperative that we come in and we're ready to play.’’
The Rangers did get bodies back Thursday, important ones, in the form of goaltender Igor Shesterkin and defenseman Adam Fox, plus forward Conor Sheary. Shesterkin and Fox returned to the lineup for the first time since each suffered a lower-body injury in a Jan. 5 game against Utah. Sheary played for the first time since suffering a lower-body injury in a New Year’s Eve game in Washington.
But sitting last in the Eastern Conference, and currently on a “retool’’ that has already seen them trade forward Artemi Panarin and defenseman Carson Soucy – with more trades surely to follow before the March 6 deadline – the Rangers theoretically could benefit from losing more games in order to secure a better chance at a higher draft pick. So why are Shesterkin and Fox even coming back?
“Because they're healthy, they trained extremely hard to get back to the position that they're in, and they're elite players,’’ Sullivan said at Thursday’s morning skate. “And they make us a better team.’’
No argument there. Shesterkin was 17-12-4 with a 2.45 goals-against average and .913 save percentage before getting hurt, and Fox had four goals and 24 assists in 30 games. Without them, the Rangers went 2-11, fell out of realistic contention for a playoff spot. But beyond just the numbers, getting Fox and Shesterkin back would lift the morale of the entire team, Sullivan said.
“Oh, I think it's a huge boost,’’ he said. “These guys, the caliber player that they are, it’s hard to replace those guys, as we know. So when you get two elite players back in the lineup like that, I think it gives a huge boost of confidence to the whole group.’’
Sullivan was asked whether the priority the rest of the season will be to play the best lineup every night and try to win as many games as possible, or to take a look at some younger players, like former first-round pick Brendan Brisson, who made his Rangers debut against the Flyers.
“I think it's a little bit of both,’’ Sullivan said. “We're going to try to win, we're going to try to compete, we're going to try to hold the group accountable to a certain standard. And at the same time, we're going to do our best to gain better understanding of what we have (in the young players) and potentially to help us to make the right decision to where we want to go moving forward.’’
The rest of the season offers an opportunity to experiment, too. Against the Flyers, Sullivan lined up defenseman Braden Schneider, a righthanded shot, on the left side, partnering him with fellow righthander Will Borgen on the second pair, behind Fox and Vladislav Gavrikov.
“Right now, we think [we have] our top four [defensemen with Fox back],” Sullivan said.
Realistically, the return of Shesterkin and Fox comes too late to save this season for the Rangers. But it will make the team more competitive. And that could help to make things less dreary the rest of the way.
Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
