Shesterkin starting to regain last season’s form

Gerard Gallant interrupted a question Sunday about how his team had a tendency last season to find ways to pull out games it had little business winning. “Shesty,” he said. That would be Igor Shesterkin, who for much of last season held up the Rangers amid poor five-on-five play on his way to a Vezina Trophy-winning campaign and has not been able to do so in quite the same way this time around. Shesterkin has started more games than any other goaltender, but outside of playing time, his stats aren’t eye-popping in the same way a .935 save percentage and 2.07 goals allowed average were last season.

His performance in the last two games, though — when he stopped 66 of 68 shots and was perfect in a shootout against Colorado on Friday night to help the Rangers steal two points in a game in which they were outshot 42-29 — was just the kind of throwback the Blueshirts needed.

Gallant said he wasn’t “overly happy” with the 2-1 win against the Avalanche, but his team’s resilience — and Shesterkin’s brilliance — is a notable positive.

“Go to the last two games, Igor’s really put the team on his shoulders,” Gallant said. “He’s carried us, he’s played great hockey, he’s made some key saves at key times. That’s what we need.”

Unlike last season, when the advanced stats indicated Shesterkin was helping the Rangers drastically overperform, they are now showing the opposite. The Rangers rank 12th in expected goals percentage, per Natural Stat Trick, and their save percentage as a team is right smack in the middle of the league, ranking 14th at five-on-five.

But if Shesterkin can turn the corner for good, it will change their ceiling.

The Rangers kept the same configuration at Sunday’s practice that they used in the shootout win over Colorado, with Vitali

Kravtsov rotating in on the fourth line.

“I don’t want to change my lines, I want to keep them going,” Gallant said. “I got guys playing good. I look at our lineup, it’s pretty consistent, those top three lines. We know what our fourth line is and what they do for us and they did a good job lately, but our top three lines, any given night you can say, ‘This is our best line.’ That’s what it should be.”