MONTREAL — He has been doing this too long to have forgotten the goaltender credo, even if that very doctrine insists you must do just that: forget. Everything. Clear your brain. Clear your memory. Hit the reset button.
Re-boot.
“This,” Henrik Lundqvist said, when this 7-4 Canadiens victory was complete, “is when you need a short memory.”
The people inside Bell Centre had barely finished cheering a rousing version of “O, Canada” when the home team pounced, buoyed by an early penalty and then a power-play goal from Alex Galchenyuk just 108 seconds into the match.
They were rocked when Derek Stepan — of course — beat Dustin Tokarski almost nine minutes later, but then Lundqvist gave a hint it might not be his night when he also let in a soft goal, this time by Tomas Plekanec, just 90 seconds later.
“To say the least,” Rangers coach Alain Vigneault would say later, “that was a strange game.”
Rangers games always look like they were dipped in psychedelic color schemes whenever Lundqvist is leaky, whenever he looks human, more regular than royal. This was one of those nights. By early in the second period it was 3-1, Habs, and then 4-1, and Lundqvist was skating off the ice and Cam Talbot was skating on.
“I pulled him because I thought we needed some momentum,” Vigneault said.
Here is one of the things that makes hockey unique from just about any other sport, the notion you can actually acquire momentum by banishing your best player to the bench, for the duration. You won’t see that happen to LeBron James, or to Peyton Manning.
Here’s another thing: it almost worked.
Actually, for one brilliant five-minute stretch, there was no almost about it: the Rangers kicked the plug out of the wall at Bell Center, assaulted the Montreal zone and battered Tokarski, finding the back of the net three times on goals by Rick Nash, Stepan (of course) and Chris Kreider.
Lundqvist watched all of this, as he would the whole third period, from a corridor leading from the ice to the dressing rooms because the way Bell Centre is configured, there isn’t a lot of room on the bench for the sitting goalie.
“I was hoping for us to get back in the game,” Lundqvist said. “And then we were back in the game.”
It was 5-4 by the end of the period, and it would have surprised nobody if Vigneault had bucked convention and gone back to the King. Except Lundqvist himself never expected to get that call. And Vigneault never intended to make it. Lundqvist would watch. The Rangers would let it ride on Talbot and trust.
“We hoped it would catch everyone’s attention,” Vigneault said.
It did. It wasn’t the first time Lundqvist has performed at less than his best in these playoffs. There was Game 6 in the first round against the Flyers, also a potential elimination game, also on the road, Lundqvist giving way after two periods and four goals in a 5-2 loss.
That was quickly forgotten 24 hours later when, playing on back-to-back nights, Lundqvist stopped 26-of-27 shots in a Game 7 win at Madison Square Garden. And he had spent the 11 games in between living in that rarefied space that only white-hot playoff goalies can visit periodically, carrying his team across long stretches of series against Pittsburgh and Montreal.
In that case a long memory is required, and his teammates have that, and there is little doubt they anticipate a fully empowered Lundqvist between the pipes Thursday night. And if they wanted a little extra, there is always this gem uttered by Rene Bourque, author of a hat trick Tuesday night for Montreal:
“Everybody talks about how … he’s a great goalie. Has he been better than ‘Ticker’ [Tokarski] this series? I don’t think so. Ticker made some big saves for us.’’
Ticker versus the King? Bourque is welcome to making his selection for Game 6 if he likes. The Rangers will take Lundqvist, who won’t be burdened by what happened Tuesday night.
Hell, he doesn’t even remember it. Already.