And then there was the time Henrik Lundqvist actually tried to score a goal in the NHL, and lived to tell about it after a stern warning from a guy who could put pucks in the net and goes by the name of Jaromir Jagr.
“This was from my first or second year. It was early in my career,” The King told me Monday. “We were up 3-1 and I missed it, and then they came down and scored on me to make it 3-2. And then they came right back down and had a great scoring chance that I just managed to save, so we win the game.
“And then in the locker room, Jagr walks up to me and says, ‘Unless you’re an MVP in this league, don’t f–king ever do that again.’
“You know what? I didn’t.”
All the seasons, all the games, all the victories, all the highs and all of the crushing lows that were interspersed along the way during one of the great eras in franchise history, they will be memorialized Friday night when Lundqvist’s No. 30 is raised to the pinwheel ceiling of a Garden that for 15 years was a backdrop to the goaltender’s greatness.
Lundqvist may have brought his star with him from Gothenburg, Sweden, but once upon a time — at his first Rangers training camp in 2005 — he was just another starstruck prospect wanting to make it in the world’s best hockey league and on the world’s biggest stage. Here again, No. 68 makes an appearance.
“You obviously have different reasons why you enjoy playing with different guys, but of all my teammates, having the opportunity to play with Jagr was so special for me,” Lundqvist said. “He is not only one of the greatest ever to play this game, but he also was kind of responsible for my ‘Welcome to the NHL’ moment.
“It was my first camp and the first trip we had was to West Point for team building. We had 30 guys left. And they put me with Jagr as my roommate. I’ll never forget it. I’m there as part this group, I’m nervous and I’m checking luggage and I see the other one in my room is Jagr.
“I couldn’t believe it, I was so excited,” said the forevermore No. 30. “I ran to call to my brother, that was the first thing I did. ‘Guess what? I’m staying with Jagr!’ It was surreal.”
Once he settled in, and it took about a minute-and-half for him to do so, Lundqvist embraced New York. This was no accidental tourist.
“I had this conviction immediately that this was the place and Therese [his wife] and I attached ourselves to the city right away. It felt so natural,” said the 39-year-old retiree. “The intensity of playing here made me feel so alive, and I loved that.
“Everything that goes on here is something I appreciated, the big stage, the intensity, the energy, how you can be as a person. At the beginning I felt a little different as a European, but the city allows you to be whoever you want to be. That was very refreshing. You could just be yourself, 100 percent. That was a great feeling.”
Had they so chosen, the Lundqvists could have lived life on Page Six. Except for the one time when the goaltender was photographed on celebrity row with Justin Bieber at a Knicks game, his appearances in this paper were pretty much confined to the sports section. That was not by happenstance.
“Therese has been very strict with that throughout our time here,” said Lundqvist. “We’ve had people here and in Sweden want to do stories on us, our daughters [9-year-old Charlise and 6-year-old Juli] and our family, and she has always been firm on keeping that part of it for ourselves. She says, ‘That’s our life.’
“Of course it was different our first seven or eight years here. Social media wasn’t as big. Now, you can know what everybody is up to — in a way. But we still try to keep a distance and protect our life in a way, if that makes sense. But Therese has always been firm on that and I have always respected that.”
So we don’t know what we don’t know about the Lundqvists. But we do know about the remarkable career the husband constructed in New York. We know about the stunning 15-4 record in elimination games from 2012 to 2015, we know about the run of brilliance in Game 7s, we know about the 459 career victories that is good for sixth in NHL history.
“One thing that was different here from in Sweden was that there was so much focus on wins for goalies,” Lundqvist said. “That was always strange to me because it’s a team sport, so why do you count the wins for the goalie when it’s really about what the team is doing? In Sweden, nobody talks about how many wins you have. That was new to me.”
It was also a little bit new when John Tortorella, who by the way chastised Lundqvist for that Page Six appearance with young Bieber, replaced professorial Tom Renney behind the bench midway through 2008-09. The Black-and-Blueshirt mentality did not stop at the crease.
“I mean, I loved Torts, you should say hello [on Friday],” the Swede said, barely suppressing a chuckle. “I’ll never forget the first time he walked into the locker room, you’d heard a lot about him and how things went in Tampa and how he was pretty tough on goalies at times, so there was so much respect there.
“You respected him and feared him at the same time. You had to be on your toes. But I loved that. He was so good at motivating the team at critical moments and that’s something I really appreciated, too. I was ready to run through a brick wall every time I walked out from the locker room. He was very good at getting everyone to that mindset, where you were preparing for a kind of war. I loved playing for him.”
If Tortorella challenged his players, so often did Lundqvist. He was not shy about sharing his opinions on the ice with teammates he may have felt deficient in certain categories. Loudly.
“You know me, I was so intense playing the game, I played with a lot of emotions, good and bad, and so many times they would come from here and not from here,” Lundqvist said, pointing first at his heart and then at his head. “For the most part I was able to take a deep breath and cool down.
“But other times, it probably was not easy for guys. I was very demanding on myself and on my teammates, absolutely. I like emotions. I loved reactions. I had guys who played with me for a long time who snapped back and would say, ‘Be quiet and stop the puck.’ ”
He stopped the puck. The face of the franchise gains franchise immortality on Friday. The number at the top of the building says it all.
Thirty.
