The Rangers have the chance to get one step closer to history Wednesday.
The longest shutout streak the Rangers hold is four games, dating back to the 1927-1928 season, when they won the franchise’s first Stanley Cup with goalie Lorne Chabot.
They will be coming off a second straight shutout victory going into a faceoff against the East’s top team, the Capitals, at the Garden.
Igor Shesterkin delivered with a 20-save performance against the Islanders on Monday for a 4-0 win, and Jonathan Quick recorded 34 saves for a shutout against Nashville just the night prior.
“Yeah, it’s great,” Shesterkin said after Monday’s win of the back-to-back shutouts.
The Rangers have had three consecutive shutouts on five different occasions in franchise history, with the latest coming April 13-19, 2022.
The three games of the most recent streak were divided up between Alexandar Georgiev and Shesterkin, with the latter having two games in net.
On April 13, the Rangers recorded a 4-0 victory over the Flyers in Philadelphia and Georgiev had 28 saves.
Shesterkin then tallied 20 saves in a 4-0 win over the Red Wings followed by another home victory over the Jets, 3-0, with 31 saves on April 19.
To produce a third consecutive shutout, the Rangers are up for a tough challenge against Alexander Ovechkin, who at 39 years old is 11 goals away from breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL record of 894.
Gretzky, who scored his final 57 regular-season goals with the Rangers, set the record on March 29, 1999, against Wade Flaherty in a 1-1 tie against the Islanders.
Now the 12-time All-Star has the chance to pass the mark 26 years later with 21 games left in the regular season.
Ovechkin has 45 goals and 26 assists against the Rangers across 75 career games.
This season he has three goals and one assist against the Blueshirts across two games split between Shesterkin and Quick.
In both contests, the Rangers lost by two or more goals.
“Our confidence is going up every day,” Shesterkin said of going into the big match on Wednesday, which also falls two days ahead of the trade deadline. “So, we know what we need to do. We just keep focus on our game and try to build something.”
Tuesday night lent hopeful playoff implications for the Rangers, but there are still many games left to be played.
With a 2-1 Hurricanes victory over the Red Wings, followed by losses for the Bruins, Flyers, and Blue Jackets, the Rangers have moved into the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference, which is determined by the first tiebreaker of regulation wins.
However, the likelihood of the Rangers’ position changing day by day is high.
The Rangers are tied with the Red Wings in points (66) in the same number of games played (61).
