The ongoing contract negotiations between the New York Rangers and Igor Shesterkin finally came to an end on Saturday evening, as the superstar goaltender signed an eight-year, $92 million contract extension.
Along with that, Shesterkin and his wife welcomed their newborn daughter into the family the following day, truly marking a weekend that the 28-year0old will never forget.
Igor Shesterkin opens up and discusses how the contract negotiations went with the New York Rangers
"I'm so happy right now," Shesterkin said on Monday.
Before the start of the 2024-25 season, it was reported by NHL insider Kevin Weekes that Shesterkin turned down an eight-year, $88 million contract extension from the Rangers.
Shesterkin later revealed that these were hard negotiations which generated a lot of outside noise that ultimately made things hard for him.
"Like I said this means a lot for me. I think it wasn't going to be easy - my agent told me it was hard negotiations, but I didn't care about that," Shesterkin said. "To be honest, it was pretty hard to take all this noise, but everything happened right now, everything is done and I can be ready for a game and be focused."
Throughout the start of the season, Shesterkin continuously shrugged off the distractions and stated he was not focused on the outside noise.
However, it wasn't long before Shesterkin finally admitted that the constant speculation regarding him and his contract situation was not the easiest thing to deal with.
"Sometimes it was pretty hard, especially after bad games," Shesterkin said. "You just try to go to the next day. But it follows you and everyone talks about it."
Shesterkin also revealed that now with the contract extension out of the way he has only one goal in mind, that being to win a Stanley Cup with the Rangers organization.
"We will try to bring the Cup back to New York," Shesterkin said.
Hopefully now that things have calmed down a bit for the New York Rangers, the team can start focusing on winning games and turning their season around.
The Rangers have currently lost eight out of their last 10 games, but hopefully things will change and they can pull off a victory against the Buffalo Sabres on Wednesday night.
