Henrik Lundqvist comes home from Sochi on top of his game if not the hockey world, with his first Olympic silver medal rather than his second gold, facing the mundane task beginning Thursday of securing a playoff spot for the Rangers.
That’s when it starts for the Blueshirts, in a match at the Garden against the Blackhawks. That’s when all of the post-whistle scrums, posturing, hacking, slashing and punching will resume in the more violent and permissive North American version of the sport after a fortnight during which pure hockey was quite enough, thank you.
Lundqvist, who was named as the Olympics’ first-team all-star goaltender following his and Sweden’s 3-0 defeat on Sunday in the gold-medal game to ruthlessly efficient Canada, isn’t expected to play in that one against Chicago following a six-game workload in Sochi, from where he won’t return until Monday.
Indeed, with the Rangers then scheduled for a weekend back-to-back that opens in Philadelphia Saturday afternoon before concluding on Broadway against the Bruins the following night, Lundqvist conceivably could watch Cam Talbot in each of the first two games before getting back into the net against the Bruins on March 2.
That would leave 20 games over the final 39 nights for the Rangers, a fair allotment of which Lundqvist could be expected to start 17 or 18 if necessary, just the way he started 19 of the final 20 upon returning from Sweden’s 2010 quarterfinal defeat in Vancouver.
It is not about quantity of starts, it is about quality of play for Lundqvist, whose revival in late December and early January soothed both Rangerstown, USA and Kingsville, Sweden. Just when folks over here were trying on Talbot for size, folks in Stockholm were heard nervously whispering, “Enroth…Lehner…Gustavsson?” as if reciting the prelude to a horror movie.
But Lundqvist steadied and became the same goaltender he’d been the previous eight seasons on Broadway and then in Sochi, No. 30 of the Crown Collection and Tre Kroner, was the same goaltender he’d been since the turn of the year in North America.
Lundqvist returns to New York disappointed but hungry. Understand this, though: Even had Sweden won gold again, Lundqvist’s quest for championships would not have been sated. He has never won a Stanley Cup, he has never been to the Final, and no NHL goaltender this deep into his career has ever won his first Cup playing for his original team.
Winning gold again would likely have only emboldened the critics who have stamped Lundqvist as a superior regular-season and international goaltender but merely ordinary in the playoffs, through which he has a career 30-37 record.
So there is precedent to be overturned by The King, who, interestingly enough, has repaired every early-season deficiency in his game except one, and that a surprising vulnerability against breakaways, one exploited on Sunday by Sidney Crosby.
Canada was a merciless machine in the medal rounds, in complete command shutting out both the USA and Sweden, completing the tournament unbeaten while constructing a six-game goal-differential of 17-3.
This wasn’t about flash-and-dash for the world’s reigning hockey power; this was about methodical game-planning and cold-blooded execution. This was about team-building that produced a squad on which Rick Nash played a constructive fourth-line role getting just a few ticks over 10 minutes of ice per game.
The tournament produced few moments of a lifetime that will resonate through history. There was T.J. Oshie’s unprecedented shootout performance for the US against Russia; 21-year-old Latvian goaltender (and Tampa Bay prospect by way of AHL Syracuse) Kristers Gudlevskis’ 55-save effort in his country’s 2-1 quarterfinal defeat to Canada; Slovenia’s first (then second) victory in Olympic competition; and Teemu Selanne’s ride through his sixth and presumably final Olympics in which he won his fourth medal, getting a bronze with Finland’s 5-0 rout of the US.
This wasn’t a tournament for glass skates. The shoes that fit the champions belonged all along to the favorites; belonged to Canada, which marched ruthlessly to a gold that leaves Lundqvist (and everyone else, to be sure) reaching for the silver chalice to be awarded in June.
http://nypost.com/2014/02/23/silver-winning-lundqvist-must-now-guide-rangers-to-playoffs/
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