The first piece of hardware handed out at the NHL Awards Ceremony on Tuesday was the Vezina Trophy for the league’s top goaltender, which is voted on by the NHL’s 32 general managers.
With 29 first-place votes, Igor Shesterkin of the New York Rangers was named the Vezina Trophy winner.
Jacob Markstrom and Juuse Saros finished second and third in voting but didn’t receive any first-place votes. Frederik Andersen, Ilya Sorokin and Andrei Vasilevskiy were the other goaltenders who received a first-place vote.
Sorokin posted a 36-13-4 record for the Rangers and he led the league with a .935 save percentage and 2.07 goals against average.
This is the first Vezina Trophy of Shesterkin’s career. He finished fifth in Calder Trophy voting last season, ultimately losing to Kirill Kaprizov of the Minnesota Wild.
He’s the sixth goaltender in Rangers franchise history to win a Vezina Trophy. The most recent was Henrik Lundqvist in 2011-12, with John Vanbiesbrouck (1985-86), Ed Giacomin and Gilles Villemure (co-winners 1970-71) and Dave Kerr (1940) preceding him.
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