Igor Shesterkin didn’t just backstop the Rangers to a win Thursday night at Madison Square Garden - he made a little franchise history along the way.
The New York goaltender became the first goalie in Rangers history to score a goal, firing the puck the full length of the ice into an empty Tampa Bay net with 2:34 left in regulation. It was the first goal of Shesterkin’s NHL career, and it came in a 5-1 Rangers victory over the Lightning.
Shesterkin, 30, was sharp all night, turning aside 24 of 25 shots. The only Tampa Bay player to get one past him was Nikita Kucherov.
The Rangers had plenty of offense around their goaltender, too. Mika Zibanejad, Pavel Dorofeyev, Eeli Tolvanen, and Gabe Perreault all found the net as New York improved to 1-1-0 on the season.
For Shesterkin, the goal added a strange little exclamation point to an already familiar kind of performance. He’s coming off his fifth straight 25-win season with the Rangers, going 25-19-6 with one shutout and a .912 save percentage in 51 games in 2025-26. Through his first two appearances this year, he’s 1-1-0 with a .936 save percentage - and now, a goal.
The path that brought him here has been well-traveled. A fourth-round pick by the Rangers in the 2014 NHL Draft, No. 118 overall, Shesterkin developed in the SKA St.
Petersburg system in Russia before arriving in North America in 2019. He spent a brief stretch with the AHL’s Hartford Wolf Pack in 2019-20, then moved up quickly and has held the Rangers’ starting job ever since.
Across 327 career NHL games in parts of eight seasons with New York, Shesterkin has a 188-108-28 record, 22 shutouts, and a .917 save percentage. In 44 playoff games, he’s 23-20 with a .928 save percentage. He also won the Vezina Trophy with the Rangers in 2022.
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