Stuart Skinner complicating Rangers’ Igor Shesterkin dilemma with Stanley Cup Final run

If the Oilers pull this off, if they win the Cup with Stuart Skinner in net a year after Vegas won it with Adin Hill, you tell me: Do the Rangers need to pay $12 million a year to ensure that Igor Shesterkin remains in New York for the next 5-8 years?

This wasn’t going to be a Shesterkin column, I promise. It was going to be about how Connor McDavid has ascended to the rarefied air of skating in a league of his own. It has been decades since an individual owned the uppermost tier unto himself without room for reasonable debate.

Maybe, I think, since Wayne Gretzky towered over the league in the early ’80s, before Mario Lemieux joined The Great One for the elite red carpet ride later in the decade.

Until this tournament, you could kind of pretend that Nathan MacKinnon or Nikita Kucherov or Auston Matthews or maybe teammate Leon Draisaitl belonged in the conversation. There is no pretense anymore.

But let me get back to Shesterkin, who owns a mountain of leverage entering the final season of his contract and whose camp is aiming for a record contract for a goaltender after having already established the record for a second contract for an NHL goaltender three years ago at his current $5,666,667 annual average value.

I’m not getting into stats here. There will be time for that. There is a larger issue, though, for GM Chris Drury and the ownership to consider. The Oilers’ goaltender carries a $2.6M cap hit. The Golden Knights’ goaltender a year ago carried a $2.175M cap hit. Who won the year before? Right, Colorado with Darcy Kuemper at a $4.5M cap charge.