Rangers will need more than Igor Shesterkin to make the playoffs

A hot goalie can sometimes carry a team to a playoff series win seemingly by himself. But asking him to carry his team for 25 games over the next seven-and-a-half weeks, just to get them into the playoffs? Well, that’s probably asking too much.

Surely, if Igor Shesterkin plays the rest of the season the way he did on Sunday, when he made 36 saves – many of them spectacular – to steal a 5-3 win for the Rangers over the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Rangers will get into the playoffs. His next test is Tuesday night against the Islanders at UBS Arena.

But, 1) there’s no way Shesterkin can play that great every night, and 2) even if he does, and they do get into the postseason, they won’t last very long.

“We’ve got to play better,’’ coach Peter Laviolette admitted after Sunday’s win, which pulled the Rangers within two points of a playoff spot. “I thought the guys, in the third period, did what we needed to do, but just from a 60-minute standpoint, we’ve got to play better.’’

A year ago, the Rangers won the Presidents’ Trophy for the best record in the regular season and reached the Eastern Conference finals, lasting six games against the eventual Stanley Cup champion Florida. But they clearly aren’t the same team this year. They’re no longer elite. And right now, they’re not Stanley Cup contenders.

And realistically, if GM Chris Drury doesn’t think the team can compete for the Cup this year, he may not be looking to bring in roster reinforcements at the March 7 trade deadline. So what we’re seeing now might be what we’ll be seeing the rest of the season.

They returned from the NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off break three points out of a playoff spot with back-to-back games at the last-in-the-East Buffalo Sabres and at the still-barely-in-it-but-fading-fast Penguins. They lost 8-2 to Buffalo and the next day in Pittsburgh, they were outshot, 31-9, over the first two periods despite leading, 2-1, going into the third.

“Everything was going wrong,’’ defenseman Ryan Lindgren said of Sunday’s second period, where they were pinned in their own end for nearly the whole period and outshot, 19-4. “They [the Penguins] were winning all the battles. Every time we did get the puck, we weren’t getting it out.

“It was awful,’’ he continued. “We were in the ‘D’ zone the entire time. We were giving them a chance after chance. Everything about it was awful.’’

In a tightly packed field of nine teams vying for two wild-card spots, the Rangers (28-25-4, 60 points) are two points behind Ottawa, which currently holds the second and final wild card spot by tiebreaker over Columbus, and four behind Detroit, which holds the first wild card.

Having Shesterkin in net gives the Rangers an advantage over most of their wild-card competitors, because when he’s on, he gives them a chance to beat anybody any night.

But they had better not be counting on him to play every game the rest of the way as he did Sunday. Because if their plan is to continue to play poorly and just hope Shesterkin erases all their mistakes, that’s a foolhardy plan.

Brennan Othmann called up

With uncertainty about Chris Kreider’s status after an upper-body injury kept him out of Sunday’s game, the Rangers called up forward Brennan Othmann from AHL Hartford. They also recalled D Zac Jones from his conditioning assignment at Hartford and returned D Matthew Robertson to Hartford.