New York Rangers hockey begins again in less than a week with no decision on a starting netminder
David Quinn still has to make the toughest decision he will ever make as head coach of the New York Rangers. The entire Rangersphere is waiting for him to decide who will start the first game of the Stanley Cup Qualifier a week from Saturday. Quinn and the organization may have already decided, but they are playing it close to the vest.
Observers at the Rangers’ practices are trying to read something into how they deploy the goalies in practice. On Wednesday, Igor Shesterkin had more time as the solo goalie while Henrik Lndqvist and Alexandar Georgiev shared the net.
Quinn explained that it’s a numbers gane. He said “The way the practice was today, there was one drill…where he (Shesterkin) was handling the puck and Georgie and Hank were taking all the shots in that one drill. Igor did have a full net today. We’ll probably move that around a little moving forward.”
For Quinn, it’s just another example of the headache as a result of the three goalie situation. “It’s not easy, it’s a complicated dynamic when you’ve got three…trying to get everybody shots.”
He concluded by saying “We’re all evaluating.”
For you conspiracy theorists out there, there has been a lot of Shesterkin face time on Twitter recently.
Set. Save. Repeat. pic.twitter.com/7tMQVelzXN
— New York Rangers (@NYRangers) July 23, 2020
Other than Artemi Panarin‘s Hart Trophy announcement the team is featuring their Russian rookie quite a bit.
When you remember there's a New York Rangers hockey game one week from today. pic.twitter.com/0PAi6dQzDW
— New York Rangers (@NYRangers) July 22, 2020
In fact, the last time the team’s Twitter account featured a Henrik Lundqvist image was on July 16.
On July 19, Rick Carpiniello in The Athletic (subscription required) hinted that the club had decided on Shesterkin and were on the verge of making that announcement. That announcement never came, but the team will have to make it before they travel to Toronto.
If Shesterkin is going to be the number one goalie, that leaves the question of who will be the backup. In the regular season, Lundqvist was always the backup whenever he didn’t start, except for one game and that was his choice. A short playoff series is a different story and it’s believed that Lundqvist is not best suited to come into games cold.
If the Blueshirts go with Shesterkin, that collective sigh of relief you may hear will be coming from the Carolina Hurricanes. They have to be afraid of Henrik Lundqvist and his career 33-12-1 record, 2.00 Goals Against Average and .934 Save Percentage. Although Shesterkin won his only start against the Hurricanes, Lundqvist has to be in their heads and you have to believe that the choice of Shesterkin over Lundqvist will be seen as a positive in Carolina.
Lundqvist’s lack of presence in any of the post-practice press conferences as well as the various social media outlets is becoming too obvious. The last time he was mentioned on the Rangers website was on July 13 when camp started. At that time he said “It is a restart; I’m controlling what I can control, I feel really good; I’m excited to be back and I can train well. Mentally, I feel like I’m well-prepared, so we just have to wait and see.”
He added “Going back to Sweden during this break gave me an opportunity to work on my game a little bit, technically, physically and mentally. I feel like coming back now, I’m in a really good place in all three areas there. I feel very excited to start the camp.”
You can be sure that the team is shielding him from the inevitable questions about the starting job, but when the house organ doesn’t mention him, it doesn’t bode well.
The good news is we are getting close to an official decision and we can then put all of the speculation to rest.