Igor Shesterkin’s nightly brilliance now comes with a nagging Rangers question

Throughout his news conference, standing against a Red Wings-branded backdrop in the aftermath of a loss to the Rangers on Monday, Derek Lalonde kept complimenting Igor Shesterkin. A “very, very special goalie.” The difference in a 4-1 game.

And then the Detroit head coach, who observed plenty of elite goaltending from Andrei Vasilevskiy during his run as a Lightning assistant, dropped his most notable praise of the night: “I can see why he turned down the 88 [million]. Good agent.”

In the three-game sample of regular-season games since Shesterkin declined an eight-year, $88 million extension that would’ve made him the NHL’s highest-paid goalie, he has continued to bail out the Blueshirts — especially during the second period against the Red Wings — and produce a strong start to what has now become a contract season.

Monday didn’t have the same ending as his opening-night shutout. It wasn’t as rocky as the Rangers’ loss to the Utah Hockey Club on Saturday, either.

But while the Rangers figure out their defensive issues in front of their Vezina Trophy-winning goaltender, Shesterkin has provided early evidence — perhaps enough to keep bumping his price tag higher and higher — that he can help them bridge the gap until everything clicks.

“It was a really tough game to judge him [Saturday],” head coach Peter Laviolette said postgame, “and I said this before, there’s times where I think we just do things that — not a lot of goaltenders can make the save that needed to be made last game. You might make one, but when you need four or five of them out there, there’s gonna be trouble coming at you.