Igor Shesterkin stood on his head for the Rangers and helped keep New York in the game, despite a flurry of shots from the Boston Bruins in the final minutes of overtime.
But with 40 seconds left, the concussion spotter came out and removed the goalie from the game.
It was a bizarre sequence that started with Craig Smith crashing into Shesterkin in the crease nearly three minutes into the five-minute sudden-death OT. Alexandar Georgiev replaced Shesterkin for the remaining 40 seconds before the latter returned for the shootout.
Shesterkin, understandably, was heated when he was removed and was seen smashing his stick on the glass as he went down the tunnel to the dressing room.
“Honestly, I did lose control when I got sent off,” Shesterkin told reporters through a translator, via the New York Post’s Mollie Walker. “You saw me hitting the boards with my stick. That won’t happen again, I promise.”
The goalie was a brick wall in the nine-round shootout, and he credited the crowd for providing him the energy he needed.
“But when I came out, the stands just gave me so much energy that I couldn’t do anything else but save the game,” he said.
But when it comes to the concussion spotter taking as long as he did to remove Shesterkin, that’s where questions were raised.
“I don’t really understand the whole point of that protocol,” Shesterkin said. “There’s 40 seconds left in the overtime. Just let me finish the play and then you can do whatever protocol you feel is necessary.”
At the end of the day, Shesterkin helped propel the Rangers to the 2-1 shootout win for the nine-round marathon.
