Fatigue makes cowards of us all, the possible exceptions being a long line of Devils coaches who never feared wearing out Marty Brodeur.
Hey, how come goalies get so sweaty? All they do is stand there.
“You’re right, it’s not like you’re skating for two hours,” Henrik Lundqvist said with a laugh, fresh off a rare 5-2 laugher Wednesday. Ludqvist beat the Devils on one glorious first-period stop on Dainius Zubrus and had a 3-goal margin when it was over.
Tonight, when the 10-3-3 Bruins, hot off an impressive win on the road against the Blackhawks, then a home-ice smoking of the best team in the East, Montreal, are at the Garden, it will be back to the grind.
Lundqvist, the reason a Rangers team sputtering on multiple cylinders is 12-5-2, will make his 11th start in 12 games tonight. But if the posts are a goalie’s best friend and the crossbar more than just his casual acquaintance, a coach whose only dominant player is a goaltender falls in love with a schedule like the one the Rangers are enjoying. Since Prague, the Rangers have had just three sets of back-to-back games and don’t face another for three more weeks. Thus, fresh as a daisy Lundqvist has been able to continually play. It’s leaving coach Tom Renney smelling like a rose, no reflection on Steve Valiquette having stunk out the Air Canada joint with a five-goal third period in his last start, a 5-2 loss to the Maple Leafs on Nov. 1.
“Absolutely not,” said Renney, asked if that loss was a confidence-drainer in his backup. Valiquette likely will get one of the starts on the Thanksgiving week Florida trip, another one or two during an eight-games-in-15-days December stretch and will play against the Flyers until they beat him.
Unlike Scott Gomez, who Renney says might play tonight, Lundqvist is not day to day. But the coach said that Lundqvist, who became hurt and tired after his Olympic Gold Medal success in 2006 and who suffered a moderate slump in each of the past two seasons, might have been overused.
“You never really get tired physically as a goalie, it’s more mental,” Lundqvist said. “When I play I really put a lot of focus into it and there definitely comes stretches where you have a tougher time keeping it.”