When both Igor Shesterkin and Adam Fox sustained lower-body injuries Jan. 5, disappearing from the lineup for the next seven weeks, the Rangers were still above .500. They’d struggled all year, sure, but any sign of momentum could jump-start a push up the Eastern Conference standings.

After dropping five goals in the Winter Classic three days before that consequential game against Utah, the Blueshirts had that too. 

But a spiraling Rangers season took one final bend out of control when they went out of commission. They went 2-11 without their pair of stars, needed to rely on a struggling Jonathan Quick as their starting goaltender and shuffled around their power play again. They’re still the worst team in the Eastern Conference. Typically, the return of two key pieces — in addition to Conor Sheary (lower-body injury) — as the Rangers resume their season after the Olympic break would’ve been viewed as a major boost ahead of the stretch run instead of being a reminder of what went wrong. 

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As the Rangers hosted the Flyers on Thursday at the Garden, they are a better team on paper with a bit of familiarity in their lineup, even if it’s too late to fix the trajectory of their season. 

“I think it’s a huge boost,” head coach Mike Sullivan said of Fox and Shesterkin returning. “These guys, the caliber of player that they are, it’s hard to replace those guys — as we know. So when you get two elite players back in the lineup like that, I think it gives a huge boost of confidence to the whole group.” 

When the Rangers have been at their best in recent years, before the gradual collapse of their core and the Letter 2.0 that signaled the start of a retool ahead of the March 6 trade deadline, those two pieces have been at the forefront. Shesterkin is their $92 million, one-timeVezina Trophy winner, and he’d collected a .913 save percentage and 2.45 goals against average this season before the Mammoth’s JJ Peterka veered toward the net and the goaltender collapsed — needing to get helped off the ice — without any contact. Quick struggled as Shesterkin’s replacement, too, collecting just a 1-8-0 record with an .853 save percentage. 

Fox, the 2020-21 Norris Trophy winner one year before Shesterkin’s Vezina nod, has collected 28 points across 30 games in 2024-25, but he’d appeared in the Blueshirts’ lineup just three times since Nov. 29 entering Thursday’s game. Initially, Fox dealt with a shoulder injury.

Then, near the end of regulation of the Utah game, he sustained one to the lower body. 

This time, the Blueshirts managed to mostly survive without him on the power play, as they entered Thursday with the 10th-best percentage in the league (22.7). Their man-advantage clip of 30.0 since December is the third best in the NHL, according to the team, and most of that — both in terms of time and production — occurred without Fox. 

“That’s his spot,” Mika Zibanejad told The Post about the significance of Fox’s return as he runs point for the power-play unit. “He’s used to it, and he does it better than a lot of people. For him to be up there, I think that calms everyone else down too — just the way he’s able to handle the pressure up there and his reads and stuff. It’s obviously great to have him back.” 

The Rangers, despite not playing a game since Feb. 5 due to the break and despite having careened toward a second consecutive season without a spot in the playoffs, didn’t waste any time getting their stars back into games. 

Shesterkin logged his 35th start of the season, with Quick relegated to backup duties again. Fox took his spot alongside Vladislav Gavrikov on the top defensive pairing and ran point on the power play. Sheary also slotted back into the Blueshirts’ third line, while fourth-line forward Adam Edstrom, out since the end of November, continued to skate with them but still needs to log more practices before returning, Sullivan said. 

During a season in which the Blueshirts’ vision has shifted to the future, and on a roster that could experience plenty of turnover across the next week before the deadline, everything, for one night, seemed closer to normal. 

“Because they’re healthy,” Sullivan said when asked why this is the right time for Shesterkin and Fox. “They’ve trained extremely hard to get back to the position that they’re in, and they’re elite players and they make us a better team.”