What to do with Igor Shesterkin?

What is the risk?

The challenge for the Blueshirts is that they have to either go all in on Shesterkin or risk losing him in two years.  If they want to see if he is the real deal and can avoid injury they can sign him to a one year deal, avoiding arbitration by giving him a sizeable bump.

That kind of deal will not sit well with the Shesterkin camp who will no doubt be looking for a commitment from the team in the form of  a big payday for long term.

A one year deal will give the Rangers the opportunity to try to sign him to a long term contract after the 2021-22 season,  but if he wants to test free agency, he may reject such an offer.

It’s really a matter of whether the Rangers believe that Shesterkin is their goalie of the future.  There is no doubt that at this point he is the best of the Rangers’ goalie pool that includes Alexandar Georgiev, Adam Huska, Tyler Wall, Olof Lindbom and Dylan Garand.

What is he worth?

If the Rangers believe that Shesterkin is the answer, they could look at the contract extension that Jordan Binnington signed in March.  After leading the Blues to the Stanley Cup in  2019, he was facing free agency after this season.  The Blues signed him to a six year, $36 million contract with an Average Annual Value  (AAV) of $6 million. It included a No Trade Clause for the length of the deal that is modified in the last three years.

Binnington’s salary is the eighth highest among NHL goaltenders and is comparable to goalies like John Gibson, Connor Hellebuyck and Matt Murray, all in their mid to late twenties.

If the Rangers can ink Shesterkin to a similar deal for seven or eight years they will be set in goal through 2028 or 2029 and it will end when Shesterkin is 32 or 33.

A bridge deal for three of four year is also a possibility, but there is a risk when he becomes a UFA after it expires. If he is as good as advertised, his price will rise.

Look at the case of Andrei Vasilevskiy, arguably, the best goalie in the NHL. After his ELC expired in 2016, the Tampa Bay Lightning signed him to a three year bridge deal at $3.5 million.  A RFA when that deal expired, they signed him for the maximum eight years at a AAV of $9.5 million making him the third highest paid goalie in the NHL after Carey Price and Sergei Bobrovsky.  They could have foregone a bridge deal and signed the future Vezina Trophy winner and probably have saved valuable cap space over the term of the contract.

We are not taking into consideration the salary cap issues facing the Lightning at the time, but that shouldn’t be a problem for the Rangers who should have the cap space for a sizable increase for their goalie.  With all of their young players coming due for hikes in salary, getting Shesterkin under contract now could avoid future cap issues.

On a team that just jettisoned its entire management team, stability in goal would be a good thing. The Rangers benefited for years with the knowledge that they could pencil in Henrik Lundqvist as their starting goalie, the only issue was that they gave him shorter term contracts early in his career and they ended up finally signing him to a seven-year contract when he was 31-years-old.  We all know how that ended up.

So, what should the Rangers do?  Is Igor the answer?  Are goalies worth $6 million a year or more?  Could the Blueshirts do better going the free agency route?  How much is stability worth? Feel free to weigh in.