Rangers goalie Shesterkin scores first goal in franchise history in home-opener win

Igor Shesterkin scored a goal for the New York Rangers on Thursday night, something no goaltender in the franchise's century of history had ever done, capping a 5-1 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning in New York's home opener at Madison Square Garden. The empty-net shot, launched the length of the ice with 2:34 left in the third period, made Shesterkin the 18th goaltender in NHL history to score a goal, according to the league's official game recap.

Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper had pulled goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy for an extra attacker as the Lightning chased the game, leaving the net empty when Shesterkin fielded the puck behind his own crease and fired it unassisted the length of the rink. Mika Zibanejad, Pavel Dorofeyev, Eeli Tolvanen and Gabe Perreault had already scored for New York; Nikita Kucherov had the lone Tampa Bay goal.

The numbers

Shesterkin made 24 saves on 25 shots, and the Rangers went 7-for-7 on the penalty kill while converting once on two power-play chances. The win moved New York to 1-1-0 to start the season, after the Rangers opened on the road with a loss at Boston on September 29; Tampa Bay fell to 0-1-0. Shesterkin's goal was the 21st by a goaltender in NHL history and the 19th to come in the regular season, a tally kept current by ESPN's box score of the game. The last goaltender to score, Ilya Sorokin of the crosstown Islanders, had done it in March 2025 and had needled his friend and rival Shesterkin for beating him to the feat. Goaltender goals remain rare enough that only two players have done it more than once: Martin Brodeur scored three times for the New Jersey Devils and Ron Hextall twice for the Philadelphia Flyers, with Hextall's 1989 postseason goal standing as the only one ever scored in the playoffs until a second arrived decades later. Every other goaltender on the list, Shesterkin now included, has just the one.

The goal also arrived in a game that doubled as a statement for a Rangers team eager to shed last season's slow start at home. New York was shut out in each of its first three home games a year ago and did not score at Madison Square Garden until 57 seconds into its fourth, a contrast the NHL's feature on Shesterkin's goal drew explicitly in describing Thursday's result.

How Shesterkin got here

Shesterkin, 29, is in his sixth full NHL season and has been among the league's most decorated goaltenders since winning the Vezina Trophy in 2021-22, a season in which he led the league with a 2.07 goals-against average and a .935 save percentage, a performance recounted on the Rangers' own retrospective of that Vezina-winning year. He has never previously been credited with a goal in the NHL, though he said afterward he had come close on occasion, and the opportunity on Thursday depended entirely on Cooper's decision to empty his own net in the final minutes.

The Rangers' season had opened two days earlier at Boston, part of a nationally televised slate to begin the 2026-27 campaign, before the team returned home for Thursday's opener in front of its own fans. Thursday's performance, built on a shutdown penalty kill and a five-goal offensive output, was the kind of complete game the organization has been seeking since the offseason.

Reaction

Shesterkin said he was unsure in the moment whether the goal had actually gone in.

"Someone on the blue line screened me ... I didn't see the puck land, so I didn't know can I celebrate or not," Shesterkin said, according to the league's recap of the game. "Everyone started jumping on me. It's pretty nice. I never did it before, so it's a lot of fun."

Center Mika Zibanejad, who scored New York's first goal of the night, said the moment had been a long time coming. "I feel like probably a dozen times I've been on the bench thinking, 'OK, this one goes in,' and he barely misses," Zibanejad said. Forward Pavel Dorofeyev added, only half-joking, that his goaltender had become a scoring threat: "He's not just a great goalie, he's a great goal-scorer right now. I have a serious competitor right now." Rangers coach Mike Sullivan called the goal a lift for the whole roster, saying, "When those moments occur for a team, they are great moments. You can see the raw emotion on the players." Cooper, for his part, was more focused on his own team's performance, telling reporters, "We had limited pushback ... that's just not a staple of what's gone on in this room," a quote carried in the Associated Press account of the game.

What happens next

The Rangers continue their early-season homestand with Shesterkin expected to remain New York's workhorse in net, a role he has held since his Vezina-winning season. The goal itself carries no competitive weight beyond the final score, but it gives a Rangers team trying to build early momentum a memorable, high-profile moment just two games into the new campaign. For Tampa Bay, the loss is an early setback for a team that will look to Vasilevskiy and its veteran core to right itself when it hosts its own home opener against the Washington Capitals on October 3. Both clubs enter the long 82-game grind with a reminder that, even in the first week of the season, a single play in garbage time can produce a moment that outlasts the final score.