I think we need to keep two things in mind here when evaluating where shesterkin's game is.
1. He's still coming back from an injury. Who knows whether he's compensating for something?
2. More importantly, Shesterkin has struggled before and just tends to go on cold streaks. He's not, and will never be, Henrik Lundqvist who was absurdly consistent for over a decade. That ship has sailed because Hank never let you question who was the number 1 guy on the team. Ever. He was way too competitive that way and was always "the guy". He was the face of the franchise in a way that few people ever could be. The more pressure Hank was under, the more intense he was. He was a generational talent. Shesty isn't.
With that in mind, Shesty has still shown to be able to fight through those cold streaks and come out the other side. In his first playoff series vs the Penguins, he played poorly the first 3 games or so, then went absolutely nuts for the rest of that series and the next two playing vezina-caliber hockey. Last year, he had a decent, but not phenomenal, regular season. Then he was unequivocally the best player on the ice in the Devils series.
He's in his prime and can easily get back to that level. I just think he needs to play through it and the team needs to be better at clearing out the slot and letting him see pucks.
And as Rangers fans, we sometimes take for granted that we are going to get elite goaltending every game. No other franchise thinks like that and it isn't going to be the case going forward.
Hank only slumped by his own standards. His "poor" stretches, were still basically stretches of being an average starter. And then as the games mattered more, he'd play better and better, all way to the culmination of being the best goalie in the history of the league when his team was facing elimination.
Love Shesty, but the precedent that Lundqvist set is basically unattainable. And honestly, it's probably better for us if he doesn't carry the team and mask all the deficiencies while earning a huge chunk of the cap. We did that with the best goalie of his generation, and [*spoiler alert*] it ended with one of the least-deserved cupless careers of all time.
Yep. Agreed.