Chris Kreider knows the last couple months of Henrik Lundqvist’s tenure with the Rangers couldn’t have been easy on The King.
The face of the franchise for 15 years, Lundqvist was reduced to a scarce third-string role amid the emergence of the younger, promising Igor Shesterkin and the organization’s preference to make him a tandem with backup Alexandar Georgiev.
The writing was on the wall for some time. However, as former head coach David Quinn once said, Lundqvist embraced it.
Lundqvist handled the end of his reign on Broadway with grace and understanding. Not even the looming unknown of what was next in his career could get in the way of the Swedish goaltender’s will to win, Kreider recalled after a practice this week ahead of Lundqvist’s jersey retirement ceremony at Madison Square Garden on Friday.
“That was honestly one of the most impressive things about the time that I played with Hank,” said Kreider, who was Lundqvist’s teammate for eight seasons. “For a guy who was as intense and demanding and competitive as he was, he was in such a good place. For everything that he experienced, all the success he experienced over the course his career, he could’ve stuck his chest out, been upset and potentially created a bit of a fuss. He could’ve said anything about it, right?
“You’re kind of putting him in a position where he could probably do that and he didn’t at all. He was the kind that just wanted to win games. For the longest time, he understood that he was probably the biggest reason why we were going to win hockey games and demanded that everyone else do the things that they could do.
“At the end of the day, that’s all that guy wanted to do was win hockey games.”
Thinking back to what it was like to practice with Lundqvist, Kreider recalled how many shots he used to take and how angry he was when he was scored on. He also said he remembered not being able to score on Lundqvist himself.
Kreider, who is now the longest-tenured Ranger, noted that he used to marvel at Lundqvist’s angles, positioning, reaction times and the desperation with which he competed.
“When you think about to some of those games, but even more so, some of those practices, when we lost in a shootout and he took like 50 breakaways after practice and guys just didn’t have any moves left — and he’s stopped like 50 in a row or something absurd,” he said. “But he was just the kind of guy who was so internally driven, knew exactly who he was as a goaltender and just demanded so much from himself and his teammates. Real special guy to be around. I was grateful that I got to play with him for as long as I did.”
For Mika Zibanejad, Lundqvist was always a Swedish icon. Watching Lundqvist compete for the Swedish Hockey League’s Frölunda was among Zibanejad’s first memories before he eventually competed against No. 30 when starting his NHL career with the Senators.
“I was, to be honest, a little starstruck when I got here to play with him,” Zibanejad said. “Just notice how, aside from all Kreids said [about him] on the ice and how competitive he was, how he made everyone better I feel like. When he wants to stop every puck, it kind of gets to you that you want to score every shot that you have on him.
“Just realizing how he is as a human being, it was really cool and I’m very fortunate to get to know him as well.”