Rangers Move Igor Shesterkin To Season-Ending LTIR

The Rangers have quietly made a move to open up considerably more salary cap flexibility.  PuckPedia reports (Twitter link) that the Rangers have transferred goaltender Igor Shesterkin from regular LTIR to season-ending LTIR.

The placement means that the netminder won’t be able to return at any point in 2026-27, either in the regular season or the playoffs.  Considering he was ruled out for the season when he sustained a leg injury last month, the Rangers aren’t really taking any sort of risk making this move.

When a player goes on regular LTIR, the cap flexibility created is capped at the lower of the player’s AAV or last year’s average salary, roughly $3.9MM this season.  That amount is also reduced by the amount of regular cap space the team has at the time.  This is the route New York initially took, giving them ample flexibility to recall Dylan Garand at the time of the injury and make other needed roster moves as well.

However, when a player is moved to season-ending LTIR, the player’s full cap hit becomes spendable again, minus any existing cap room or existing LTIR usage.  That’s especially notable when you consider that Shesterkin has the highest cap hit for a goalie in NHL history, checking in at $11,567,857.

Per PuckPedia, the Rangers now have roughly $9MM in LTIR room at their disposal after today’s acquisition of Arvid Soderblom.  They technically didn’t need to make this move to facilitate the trade as they had nearly $3MM in regular LTIR room beforehand and Soderblom only cut down about half of that.

Accordingly, it’s fair to wonder if GM Chris Drury has something else in the works on the trade front that will see them add someone with a higher salary, be it between the pipes or elsewhere.  Alternatively, this could just be the team creating that flexibility now so that they’ll be set to strike should a trade opportunity come around.

In the meantime, Garand and Joonas Korpisalo (who recently came off IR himself) have certainly held down the fort so far in Shesterkin’s absence.  Garand, who cleared waivers back in training camp, sits 11th in the league in SV% at .910, which has helped New York hold onto third place in the Metropolitan Division at the quarter-mark of the season.  The sustainability of that could be questioned but right now, their goaltending has been relatively strong, even without their franchise player between the pipes.