Big update on Igor Shesterkin.

There was some major concern regarding the health and status of New York Rangers starting goaltender Igor Shesterkin on Friday night, but we are happy to report that the young netminder appears to have avoided the worst of it.

Shesterkin was injured on Friday night during a game between his Rangers and the San Jose Sharks on what appeared to be a relatively nothing typing of play. Shesterkin was sprawled out in his crease and appeared to come up hurt, leading to a heated scrum between the Sharks and the Rangers on the ice. As you will see from the replay below however there appeared to be no meaningful contact made with the goaltender, certainly not anything that could have led to an injury.

Of course that in and of itself was a cause for concern as these kinds of non-contact injuries can often prove to be the most serious for goaltenders in the National Hockey League. Thankfully we got some good news on Saturday courtesy of New York Rangers head coach Gerard Gallant, indicating that he expects Shesterkin will be back in the lineup very shortly.

"We feel really comfortable that he'll be able to go in a week," said Gallant when addressing the media on Saturday.

Furthermore NHL insider Elliotte Friedman is reporting that the Rangers have now officially placed Shesterkin on injured reserve and have done so starting today. This means that Shesterkin will now be forced to miss at least the next 7 days, although that is pretty good news considering how bad this looked initially.

Shesterkin has once again been dynamite for the Rangers this season and has frankly looked like one of the better goaltenders in the entire league. Over 18 appearances this season he has a very solid 2.05 goals against average and a very impressive .937 save percentage for the Rangers. Obviously losing a player of Shesterkin's caliber is never going to be viewed as a positive but when taking into account the fact that many feared he could be out long term, this is a decent consolation prize.