When you have spent enough time around Henrik Lundqvist for 10 years, you think you know him pretty, pretty, pretty well.
So as I moseyed up to the goaltender's stall at the Rangers' practice rink following Wednesday's final prep for Game 1, Round 1 at the Garden on Thursday, I was pretty, pretty — all right, enough of that — sure that asking him about the all but miraculous save he made against Evgeni Malkin in the final minutes of last year's Game 7 in Pittsburgh would elicit the animated response I was seeking.
"The save on Malkin your favorite?" is how the leading question was phrased.
"Malkin? Which one was that?" Lundqvist said, a quizzical expression crossing his Don Draper-esque visage.
"You know … the scramble in front, you not having your stick…"
("You know," I wanted to say, "the one that I had been planning on writing this column about … that one, Hank!")
Ah, a flicker of recognition from the King.
"The favorite one of my career?" he said. "Uh, not really … I don't really think about that one."
Without that one, without the flurry of saves on that scramble in front with 5:15 to go and the Penguins pressing desperately to get the tying goal, there may not have been a Game 7 victory in Pittsburgh, there might not have been the conference finals victory over Montreal and there might not have been that ride to, and that defeat in, the Cup final that has informed so much of this season.
Lundqvist may not think about it, but suffice to say there isn't a Rangers fan extant who hasn't thought about it and cherished the memory. There was a stop on James Neal, a stop on Kris Letang, then Jussi Jokinen, Paul Martin was lurking, and there was Malkin.
"It was just a big scramble. It was chaos and react," Lundqvist recalled. "There was nothing really technical about it.
"When it comes to my best saves, I rather think about the ones that are technically [sound] combined with the importance," said the goaltender, who will make his 92nd straight playoff start for the Blueshirts on Thursday. "That one is not in my top three."
I hesitated for a moment before asking the obvious follow-up, girding myself for the same response that Willie Mays offered one time (or so legend has it) when asked whether a certain phenomenal catch in center field was his greatest.
"I don't rate 'em, I just catch 'em," Mays either said or is said to have said.
But no.
For Lundqvist was able to tick off his three favorite saves, or at least, "three, I remember," with only one of them coming while wearing a Rangers uniform.
"There was one in Sweden in the semifinals of the playoffs, I don't remember the player, but it was a scorpion save on a breakaway," Lundqvist said. "It was late in the third period of a 0-0 game, we won 1-0 to win the series and go to the final, and then we won the championship."
That was in 2005, Lundqvist's final year playing for Frolunda before coming to New York.
"The second one, I made a save in the gold-medal game of the Olympics with about 30 seconds to go, when we were winning 1-0 against Finland," Lundqvist said. "It was against Olli Jokinen, he had it alone in front and I just dived across with my blocker."
That was in 2006, in the Turin Games, when Sweden and Lundqvist took gold.
"And the third was the one against Montreal last year in Game 6," Lundqvist said. "The one on [Thomas] Vanek."
The game at that time was scoreless with about 4:45 remaining in the second period when Vanek's shot from the left deflected high off Dan Girardi's stick and appeared headed for the top shelf before Lundqvist somehow spun acrobatically to bat the puck away with his blocker.
Dominic Moore scored less than three minutes later and the Rangers would win 1-0 to advance to the final. All three cited saves came in 1-0 games.
"That one just because how big that game was," Lundqvist said. "You know, that wasn't so technical. Now that I think of it, the other two weren't either.
"A lot of my saves, I don't really remember them as well," he said.
In other words, Lundqvist will make 'em and everyone else can just remember 'em.
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