You can play the way the Rangers play, with much more will than Gretzky-esque skill, with patience as a virtue, when you have Henrik Lundqvist standing defiantly in front of your net, and the other guys do not.
It is no easy thing when you carry the hopes and dreams of New York City on your shoulders with expectations higher than the Stanley Cup that was hoisted over Mark Messier’s head that magical 1994 night when “1940” became a distant memory.
Henrik Lundqvist does not buckle under the weight.
He is the singular reason why these young Rangers believe, why New York believes there can be another Miracle on 33rd Street.
This is a pugnacious, tenacious team that takes on the personality of coach John Tortorella. It’s a team that can give you a different hero every night, even a wunderkind named Chris Kreider, the soft-spoken, unassuming pup out of Boston College who scored the game-winner in the second period on a 30-foot slap shot — and rejoiced on his knees and pumped his arms when he did — who ignited the Rangers’ 3-1 Game 1 win yesterday over the Capitals.
When someone asked him whether he can maybe be Jeremy Lin II, Kreider, who said he got goosepbumps when the Garden chanted his name, simply shook his head from a seat inside his locker.
The veteran Lundqvist said he know there is a long way to go.
“I think both teams know that one mistake could be the difference, so you just have to play smart all the time,” Lundqvist said.
But one mistake against these Rangers is often sudden death. When you have the good fortune to have a big-game artist such as Lundqvist in your net, the man who wears the “C” on his chest for the Rangers, Ryan Callahan, can feel every bit as comforted as the captain of the Yankees, Derek Jeter, feels when CC Sabathia is asked to be the stopper in a big game. Every bit as comforted as the Giants with Eli Manning at the end of a Super Bowl.
“It means everything in the NHL to have probably the best goalie, and one of the best players in the world,” said Brad Richards, another key member in this Rangers’ run .
The Rangers led 1-0 when Brooks Laitch, storming in from Lundqvist’s left, fed across ice to Jason Chimera past a diving Dan Girardi, and it was 1-1 with 3.5 seconds left in the second period.
“As a goalie, you start thinking about how big of an impact a goal can have on the game,” Lundqvist said. “I stayed patient and tried to wait for the shot — he just beat me.”
No one else could.
“If he sees a shot,” Alex Ovechkin said, “he’s going to save it.”
The Vezina should belong to Lundqvist, glove hand down. But he hasn’t hoisted the Stanley Cup. Mike Richter has hoisted the Cup. His teammates will never buy the argument that Lundqvist needs a championship to validate his greatness. But others, of course, will.
“I try to approach it the same way so when I’m out there, I have the same feeling now that I have during the regular season,” Lundqvist said.
“He showed up at the start of the season with the same steely-eyed focus you see in all the great ones. It doesn’t really matter what point it is in the season,” Ryan McDonagh said. “Every time he knows he’s playing he’s so focused, it drives everybody to match that intensity and that preparation. You could see it here in the playoffs — he hates to give up goals, and we want to try and help out our best to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
Capitals goalie Braden Holtby is just 22 years old, poised beyond his years, but yesterday he was flappable.
“It’s a tough game to stay into, mentally-wise, and I didn’t do a good enough job of it,” he said.
He had never played Broadway in the second round of the playoffs: an apoplectic sea of blue, waving white towels, a thunderous chorus of “Let’s go Rangers” early and often.
There will be nights when Tortorella’s fire will not scorch the pride and passion inside his Rangers, and Lundqvist (18 saves) will have to save them. He didn’t need to save the Rangers yesterday.
“We hit a few posts and their goalie was good,” Capitals coach Dale Hunter said. Better than Holtby, who heard a serenade of “Holtby Sucks, Holtby Sucks.” That’s when the Garden wasn’t chanting “Henrik, Henrik” after several of his more difficult saves.
He will be hearing that sweet sound again. And maybe for a while.