The Garden crowd nearly saw Igor Shesterkin’s best impression of Patrick Roy on Tuesday night, and we are not talking about performance.
Andrei Svechnikov took out the Rangers’ netminder early in Game 2 as Shesterkin played the puck behind the net, causing the Rangers to bum-rush the Hurricanes winger in defense of their goalie.
Shesterkin, who skated as far as the blue line before being accosted by an official, got within a few inches of the scrum and clearly was not too happy.
The hit was reviewed for a major, but it was ultimately called a tripping minor on Svechnikov.
The Rangers failed to score on the subsequent power play.
Shesterkin, who backstopped the Rangers to a Game 1 victory, let up his first goal of Game 2 shortly thereafter as Jake Guentzel tipped in Sebastian Aho’s shot to tie the score at one.
Dmitry Orlov scored for Carolina with 5.4 seconds left in the first period to give his team a 2-1 lead.
The Rangers got a bit of revenge on Frederik Andersen, though, as troublemaker Matt Rempe snowed the Carolina netminder, prompting some shoving from Jack Drury.
Shesterkin has been the recipient of unwanted physicality around the crease before — it was a throughline of the 2022 conference final against Tampa — but has never dropped the gloves himself, a la Roy against the Red Wings in 1997.
Close as he came Tuesday, he’ll need to save that for another occasion.