NEW YORK \u2014 The mood in the New York Rangers room was different.<\/p>\n
Even if they\u2019d won by five or lost \u2014 it was the latter in a 3-2 overtime defeat at the hands of the Utah Mammoth at Madison Square Garden on Monday night \u2014 you wouldn\u2019t have been able to tell the difference.<\/p>\n
Igor Shesterkin, considered to be one of the game\u2019s best goaltenders, and arguably the face of the franchise for the Blueshirts, was forced to leave the game in the first period with what appeared to be a serious injury to his left leg following a mild collision with Mammoth forward JJ Peterka.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old Russian-born netminder, who had just backstopped his team to a win at the Winter Classic on Friday night, could put no weight on that leg as he had to be helped off the ice and down the tunnel to the locker room after the injury.<\/p>\n
Most players didn\u2019t want to speak too much on it \u2014 Artemi Panarin among them who couldn\u2019t offer much not knowing the severity of the injury \u2014 but there was no getting around the potential long-term loss of their most reliable player.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it\u2019s brutal,\u201d said Rangers alternate captain Vincent Trocheck. \u201cYou never want to see anyone go down like that, especially when it\u2019s a goaltender who\u2019s world-class. It always sucks seeing guys go down like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Head coach Mike Sullivan offered the expected update after a lengthy wait for his post-game press conference following the loss, saying that Shesterkin was being evaluated for a lower-body injury and that he had no news regarding the potential nature of it prior to the completion of further testing.<\/p>\n
He did, however, entertain a question on just how big of a blow it might be if the worst-case scenario was to play out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want him to get hurt, he\u2019s an important part of this team, and hopefully it\u2019s not too serious,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cThere are certain guys that drive your team, and he\u2019s one of them for us.\u00a0 He\u2019s an elite player at his position, I think he\u2019s one of the very best in the game.\u00a0 When you lose a player like that for any length of time, those types of players are difficult to replace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Veteran backup Jonathan Quick stepped in admirably for Shesterkin, playing the duration of the game and stopping 14 of the 17 shots he faced; he ultimately picked up the loss after Sean Durzi\u2019s game-winner just 66 seconds into overtime.<\/p>\n
Angry with likely some combination of the result, a blown third-period lead and the Mammoth crashing the net on multiple occasions, Quick\u2019s postgame comments were brief and gruff.\u00a0 Panarin, meanwhile, was able to at least speak on his team walking away with a much-needed point in the standings despite a difficult ending to the night.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should have given ourselves a better chance on three-on-three in overtime, we need points right now,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just frustrating, this game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 The mood in the New York Rangers room was different. Even if they\u2019d won by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5111],"tags":[5,3328,35,5190,5193,4,36,43,5366],"class_list":{"0":"post-393665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-rangers","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-rangers","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkrangers","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-rangers","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-top-stories-trt"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115848614128345908","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}