LOS ANGELES — This was a hold-your-breath moment, the kind of instance that really would have put the Rangers’ entire season in jeopardy.
There was Henrik Lundqvist on Saturday afternoon in Denver, down on the ice and writhing in pain. His teammate, Brady Skjei, had just lost an edge and went barreling into Lundqvist’s lower body. It could have been a knee injury, an ankle, a hip. It could have been the end of this season as the Blueshirts know it.
“I just got stuck, the post right on my calf,” an exasperated Lundqvist said after he was able to finish game. “It was pretty painful for a minute, then it kind of went away. So it was fine.”
The Rangers already were dealing with quite a few injuries, playing that game without five regulars — Kevin Hayes (leg contusion), Marc Staal (hip pointer), Michael Grabner (flu), Kevin Shattenkirk (knee surgery) and Chris Kreider (rip resection). Predictably, against an Avalanche team that had won eight straight coming in, the Rangers lost 3-1, the score inflated by an empty-net goal from Mikko Rantanen with 0.1 seconds remaining in regulation.
But as they continued this four-game road trip with the second leg of a back-to-back Sunday night against the Kings at Staples Center, that one moment had been a reminder just how important Lundqvist is to this team. As they toed the line between being a playoff contender and possibly a seller around the Feb. 26 trade deadline, the majority of the hope still remained embodied in Lundqvist.
The 35-year-old Swede is having a resurgent year, one that started slow — both individually and as the team got out to a historically bad 3-7-2 getaway — but went through a major upturn from Halloween to just before Christmas, a streak of 16-5-1 that brought them back into the fold in the Eastern Conference. Since then, the Rangers have returned to middling, going 5-6-2 starting with a loss to the Devils on Dec. 21 and going into Sunday night.
But Lundqvist remained playing at his high level, making him an All-Star for the fourth year and putting him in consideration for a second career Vezina Trophy. And while the Blueshirts had given up 35 or more shots in 12 of their past 16 games, Lundqvist had not flinched.
It goes back to when coach Alain Vigneault decided to bench him for two straight games, then he returned for the Oct. 31 matchup against the Golden Knights at the Garden. The Rangers stormed back with four unanswered goals to win 6-4. Lundqvist started 30 of the next 35 games, missing a game Dec. 5 in Pittsburgh due to illness. During that stretch, he had been 19-8-2, with a 2.38 goals-against average and a .930 save percentage. He also faced 1,020 shots during that time, by far the most of any goaltender in the league.
see also
How Rangers should treat Henrik Lundqvists resurgence
Regarding the Rangers, who were delayed on their way to…
“Our team, we’ve got Hank and everybody knows what he brings to the table,” Vigneault recently said. “After that, we’ve got a whole bunch of pieces. When they play well and work well together, the sum of those make it a real good team. When you have one guy on one [defensive] pair not playing real well, or one guy on one line [not playing well], it makes it challenging for us. We need to get the four lines and we need to get the six D’s going.”
The Rangers were certainly happier with their collective effort in Denver, playing a relatively tight game but just unable to sustain any offensive pressure. It is kind of the way they’re built now, where they rely on Lundqvist for nightly brilliance and hope they can find some way to score more than two goals. That task has proven harder with some of their most skilled players sidelined.
But as long as Lundqvist remains upright, they have at least one reason to hold out hope.