If the Rangers’ postseason fate lies largely with the play of starting goalie Henrik Lundqvist, it turns out that the fate of where they start that postseason now lies in the hands of his understudy, Antti Raanta.
It was announced on Saturday that Lundqvist would miss 2-3 weeks with a muscle strain in his hip, suffered in the first period of the team’s 5-2 win at Florida on Tuesday, when he stayed in the game and made 43 saves. So now the net belongs to Raanta, starting with Sunday night’s game against the Red Wings in Detroit.
“I think it could be the difference — it will be the difference,” Lundqvist said after his team practiced without him in Westchester on Saturday. “When you have a guy behind you that can win a lot of games, not only to work with and compete against in practice, but to be able to help the team win a lot of games, in the end, you look at the standings, it makes a huge difference. Antti will get a lot of ice time now, obviously, and he deserves it.”
Backing up Raanta will be Magnus Hellberg, the 6-foot-6 Swede who was called up from AHL Hartford and has played in three NHL games with zero starts. With all of the next eight games over the next two weeks being part of back-to-back sets — including when the Blueshirts play host to the Lightning at the Garden on Monday night — coach Alain Vigneault was asked where he stands in terms of playing Hellberg. Though he wasn’t definitive, he gave an indication of a heavy workload going Raanta’s way.
“I’m going on a game-to-game basis, but I would say to you that Antti has wanted an opportunity here to play more than the amount of games he’s playing,” Vigneault said. “Our games, other than back-to-backs, are pretty spread out. So we’ll take it a game at a time, see how he feels, and go from there.”
Lundqvist knew the exact moment that he was hurt in the first period against the Panthers, saying it was “a save there where my body was going one way, my leg the other way, and I had an impact on my hip.”
He said he didn’t think he made the injury any worse by staying in — and coming out was hardly an option.
“If you were to tell me to get off the ice, you would not be able to because I wanted to continue to play,” he said. “Now it’s about how you deal with it and make the most of this next two weeks, training and rest and try to come back and be on top of things.”
There was no indication the Rangers were trying to be overly cautious with the injury, in hopes of making sure Lundqvist is ready for the playoffs. But unprompted, the 35-year-old Lundqvist did mention a three-game California road trip that starts in Los Angeles on March 25 as a possible landing spot.
“I know we’re going to L.A. at the end of the month. We’ll see if that’s good timing,” he said. “But we just have to wait and see.”
After they return from California following a game in San Jose on March 28, there are just five games remaining on the regular-season schedule, the finale being on April 9 at home against the defending Stanley Cup champion Penguins. It just so happens that going into play on Saturday night, the Rangers were in the first wild-card position just four points shy of virtual second-place tie in the Metropolitan Division between the Penguins and Blue Jackets.
Of course, there is the ever-present storyline of the advantages with finishing in the first wild-card spot and crossing over into the weaker Atlantic Division side of the postseason bracket. (Though the Rangers’ two recent losses to that division’s top team, the Canadiens, doesn’t exactly bode well for an easy go in the first round.) The Rangers also have an almost insurmountable 14-point cushion inside the playoff bubble.
So by the time Lundqvist returns, the postseason picture will likely be a little clearer. And where the Rangers are will be due in large part to how Raanta plays.
“I don’t try to be Hank, I just try to be myself,” Raanta said. “I know that every time when I play, it’s always a big thing for me to show what I can do. That’s what I try to do right now.”