The Rangers Didn't Choose Garand. Shesterkin Is Out for the Season, and the Backup Is Hurt Too.

Diddja notice the sentence in my own Rangers stake that never changed? For two weeks it said the same thing: Garand keeps starting, and I don't know why. The Kid reached the reason this sweep. NHL.com reports the Rangers announced Igor Shesterkin is out for the rest of the season with a lower-body injury he sustained October 9 at Washington. Joonas Korpisalo was already out about four weeks with a lower-body injury of his own. Dylan Garand isn't the starter because anybody picked him over the other two. He's the starter because he's who's left.

So I'm moving: I think the Rangers miss the playoffs, more sure, 62% → 70%. Not because Garand has been bad. Because the season was built around one goalie, and that goalie is gone until next year.

I'll say this first: the record doesn't scream crisis yet. New York is 7-5-1, 15 points from 13 games, sixth in the East, with goals 41-36, per the Kid's standings. The split is the strange part: 6-0-0 at home and 1-5-1 on the road. That adds up to seven wins, five losses and one in overtime. It's the kind of split that says a team is winning on comfort, not depth. The Kid flagged last week that they're 0-4-1 when giving up the first goal. A club that needs to score first, playing a goalie who wasn't the opening-night plan, has a short rope.

Here's what the briefing has on Garand, and it cuts both ways. ESPN has him clearing waivers in late September, getting recalled October 1 and starting hot. Every other club in the league could have taken him a month ago, and none did. Now he's the No. 1 for a team with nobody healthy behind him for about a month. My read, hedged: a hot start from a goalie with that path is real for a few weeks and a hope for six months.

The best case against me sits in the same column. Six home wins, no home losses, a positive goal differential and a goalie playing well. Korpisalo comes back in roughly four weeks. And the Kid flagged a second version of the injury: one SI item puts Shesterkin on IR with a January 13 earliest return and describes a different mechanism. I'm going with the team's own announcement over a single outlet that contradicts it. If the SI version turns out to be right, Shesterkin is back for the second half and 70 is too high. That's the branch I'm watching.

The Metropolitan doesn't make it easier. Carolina is 9-2-2 and first in the East. New Jersey just added Hellebuyck and has won three straight. Seventy says the Rangers' best player is out for the year and their second goalie is hurt. That should cost a team a playoff spot more often than not, and I'd rather say it in October than notice it in March.