Henrik Lundqvist has been perfect so far in these Olympic Games. He shut out Germany Wednesday and followed it up with another shutout against Finland on Sunday night.
NHL.com caught up with the New York Rangers' goaltender as he and the rest of the defending Olympic champs left the Canada Hockey Place Ice following the 3-0 victory over Finland that clinched Group C for Sweden and gave it a bye into the quarterfinals and the second seed behind Team USA.
NHL.com: Is your plan to allow no goals through the entire Olympics?
Lundqvist: The team has been playing outstanding so far. I had some luck a couple times and they bailed me out each time.
NHL.com: Sweden swept Group C and gets a bye into the quarterfinals. What is the team's mindset?
Lundqvist: The first round here has been good for us. It seemed like we raised our game each game like we should. And now we get a good day off tomorrow, a good practice Tuesday and get ready for Wednesday.
But it's just down to one game. So it doesn't matter how we did over these three games. We have to start over now.
NHL.com: The only blemish tonight was the parade of Swedish players to the penalty box against a team that came in with a sizzling power play.
Lundqvist: Yeah, and we talked about their power play. They had 50 percent going into this game. We had a lot of respect for their power play. But we did an amazing job on the PK. And I think that was the difference. That was key for us, that we could kill all those minutes. They had a lot of opportunities on their power play, but we made it tough for them to take what they wanted.
NHL.com: You are the defending Olympic champs and, since many of your players return from Torino, you must feel as if you know what it takes.
Lundqvist: The thing is, you can feel so good and then you go into the game and get a couple of bad bounces and it can turn in the wrong direction. So yeah, we're happy with the first three games, but on Wednesday, it doesn't really matter. You have to start over. Your mindset has to be the first five minutes.
And you just have to be so solid, you can't really afford to take too many penalties or make many mistakes.
We feel good. We should feel good. At the same time, on Wednesday, it's just down to one game. It doesn't matter what you've done in the past.
http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=518503
Thanks for the photo credit - I had to screencap a streaming interview for that one perfect shot in the whole interview! For the credit, can you link to the blog too? Also if you need more Henke pics, check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/kokopoko/sets/72157623339781403/ as I'm trying to compile them in one spot. Good Henrik pics are hard to find.
ReplyDeleteI'll link to your blog if you put up a link to mine on yours. That's an impressive collection of Henrik pics, I would use them but when I go to save them, it just spaceballs.
ReplyDeleteIf you click on the 'all sizes' icon above the photo, then you go to another page where you can right click and save the photo. There are a lot of other Lundqvist photos on flickr too. I've tried to find them and put them in my flickr favorites.
ReplyDeleteI'll link to your blog on the blogroll on the side.
Thank you, I'll try that. Thank you for adding the link, I just added yours.
ReplyDelete