I'd love to keep Georgie as I've said infinitum amount of times but I just don't know how we are going too unless something unexpected occurs with Hanky. I dunno man, this is a real conundrum and I don't envy Gorts as he only has another 6 weeks or so to figure out what he's going to do.
As far as whether or not Georgie or Shesty is the #1 going forward, on "paper" one would assume it's Shesty as he's been primed to take over for Hank for 3 years now. Georgie tho has put a a bit of a wrench into the situation as I don't think the Rangers thought he'd end up being as good as he's been.
Best scenario would be as much as I love and adore the King for what he's done for us the past 13-14 years, I'd hope and pray that Hank wanted to win a Cup so badly that he went to Gorton and JD and said deal me to a contender like Colorado for example where we could keep Georgie and Shesty and let them battle it out and may the best man win the gig.
I'd give this scenario about a 10% chance of occurring but one can only hope that it does. We'll be finding out pretty soon how this ends up playing out.
It's a weird and kinda sad place to be in right now tbh. Shesty needs to play, to reply to your earlier query on who would play vs. CBJ but I have a feeling they'll go with Hank. They can't sit him forever, or at least, they won't do him like that even if he's seemingly our third goalie atm (too small of a sample size for Shesty in the NHL yet, though I do think he will be a beast) and I think it'd be silly and weird to not let Georgie finish this Islanders series. It's his series right now and he's definitely invested in it. Tuesday should absolutely be Georgiev. Shesty needs to play more NHL games. We can't sit Hank forever.
Goalie conundrums are terrible to deal with. We've seen it with Montreal, and with Vancouver among others. Ours is particularly frustrating. Shesty has performed extremely well at every level and league he's played at/in, and his brief 2-game NHL stint showed that he can do it here too. He is, I truly believe, going to be one of the league's best goalies moving forward, period. There will likely be some speed bumps, but I don't think they'll be major or last long. I think he's pretty much ready for prime time. Then we have Georgiev who has proven several times over that he can be a starter in this league. He's got 64 NHL games on his resume over 3 seasons and in front of varying degrees of weak defense (structurally or otherwise) and while he's definitely had some very poor outings, he's shown that he bounces back and has progressed very nicely. And he's shown that he can absolutely steal games and be a stud. At 23. He'd be a better starter for a lot of teams in the league already, the only question is how he'll handle a larger load of 50-60 games or so, and personally I think he'd be fine with that as he's adjusted well and been introduced smoothly (this is the one area where I could see some small hiccups with having Shesty play that much right away which wouldn't be ideal).
And then we have Hank. The contract is one year too long. That's what it boils down to right now. A LOT of our questions and issues would be resolved if Hank's contract ended this season. For one, removing his $8.5M would allow us to keep both Strome and DeAngelo easily, which I truly think we should even if we move one later. Secondly, it would allow us to re-sign him as a backup for a year or two at a much lower salary and I think he'd do that. Play with Shesty, understanding that he's the backup who's easing in the new generation (who idolized him as a kid, too) and giving him a chance to maybe see us compete again and make a run before he retires (BIG maybe, but still) while still getting to play and semi-coach along with Allaire. That'd be our best case scenario imo, while having Huska and maybe some other vet in the AHL.
In either situation we have to move Georgiev. And that sucks. Because I want to see him continue to develop and be awesome for us, and we've all (well, most of us) grown attached to the guy! We can't keep Georgiev and Shesty. We could for a year if Hank retired fully, which is the other way things could work out for us (and we know the org would give him any job he wants and pay him as much as his current contract does next year, easily) by signing Georgiev to a decent contract and having a tandem of him and Shesty, which would still ease Shesty in and would likely increase Georgiev's trade value in the long run. But ultimately, either way, we're gonna have to move one of the two since both, imo, will be starters and we can't have a 2 starter situation for long. And as much as I love Georgie, and think he'll be awesome somewhere else which will hurt to see, I think Shesty is the one to keep. I felt weird about moving Cam, and then Raanta too... but trading Georgiev feels worse.
Ok, rant off. Point is Shesty needs to play and Hank won't sit forever. So, I have no idea how they handle this other than trading Georgiev for, hopefully, a nice return. We can't risk losing Shesty. What I'd give to have both for a cup run though, damn.