You know, it used to be kind of routine around here for the Rangers to win playoff rounds and for Henrik Lundqvist to win his goal-tending matchup, no matter the guy at the other end of the ice.
Of course it was.
But then came last spring and the opening-round, five-game surrender to the Penguins in which the King was pulled in each of the last two contests.
And then came this regular season in which Lundqvist had the rockiest time of his decorated 12-year career as religiously documented pretty much from beginning to end.
End?
Not so fast.
This is just the beginning for the King and his court. Just the beginning for the Rangers after their 3-1, Game 6 victory over the Canadiens at the Garden closed out the Habs in an opening round in which the Blueshirts threw their weight around and in which their goaltender was the series’ pre-eminent goaltender, even if the guy at the other end was named Carey Price.
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Mats Zuccarellos two goals lead Rangers to series clinch
It was a regular season that started with uncertainty and…
And what was so routine from 2012 through 2015, when the Rangers were the only team in the NHL to advance every year while making it once to the Stanley Cup Final and two other times to the conference final, seemed a little more special and worth savoring this time around.
“Those other years, we were expected to win, and you can feel that as you’re going through it,” Marc Staal said. “Last year was such a disappointment for us, we wanted to wash that taste out of our mouths starting with the first day of training camp.
“We played with a bit of an attitude, a bit of a chip on our shoulders in this series. Nobody wanted a repeat of what happened last year.”
There was no repeat. The Rangers played with pride and poise even after that stink-bomb of a 3-1 Game 3 defeat in which they lost their sixth straight playoff game at MSG while falling behind in the series 2-1.
“I think that kind of shocked us,” Staal said. “But we sorted it out, played a strong fourth game and took it from there. We had good belief and good will in here.”
They took that good will and hunted down the Canadiens with a physical game that would have seemed antithetical to their skill set but was not. They blended a hard-edged game with their speed to take the final three games of the series, outplaying the Habs in each one of them.
“We put a lot of effort into every game here. We didn’t get anything for free. Nothing was handed to us,” Lundqvist said. “This means a lot.”
You better believe this means a lot to the 35-year-old Swede, even he never will admit on a personal basis just how much it meant for him to outplay Price in the matchup of elite goaltenders pretty much everyone in the world had expected to tilt the Montreal netminder’s way.
“I have a lot of respect for Carey. He’s been a top goalie for a number of years,” Lundqvist said of the Canadian goaltender who bested him and Team Sweden in the gold medal game in the 2014 Sochi Olympics. “I knew I was going to have to play my best. I said before the series that pretty good would not be good enough.”
Lundqvist was superb. He never gave an inch. Never gave ground. While Price was allowing some funny-looking five-hole and short-side goals, such as Mats Zuccarello’s series-winner from the right circle at 13:31 of the second period that snapped a 1-1 tie that somehow snuck through, Lundqvist was steadfast.
He was calm and cool and quick. He battled through traffic. He absorbed body blows from all series long. He took the ice shavings that Alex Radulov, Montreal’s best player, sprayed on him.
And he made the series-saving stop by flashing his left pad on Tomas Plekanec at point blank range with 1:45 remaining in the third, the Canadiens swarming with the extra attacker, and the puck coming out from behind the net.
“It was just a desperation save,” Lundqvist said. “I knew with two minutes to go, it was going to be one or two more saves, and if I could come up with those, we were going to be in good shape.”
He finished the series the way he started it for this series in which he compiled a 1.69 goals against average and .947 save percentage.
He finished it with his arms in the air raised in a playoff victory salute. He ended it, did Henrik Lundqvist, on the winning side of the handshake line.
Business as usual for the King.