Henrik Lundqvist wouldn’t quite say it this clearly, so Derek Stepan was willing to do it for him.
“Right now, he loves this Carey Price-Henrik Lundqvist matchup,” Stepan said about the two competing goalies, two of the best in the world going toe-to-toe as their first-round series approaches a climax, the best-of-seven contest tied at two games apiece with the scene shifting back to Montreal for Game 5 on Thursday night.
“It’s been a great matchup between the two of them,” Stepan said, “and he’s enjoying every minute.”
Lundqvist finally was given a bit of a respite in Game 4 on Tuesday night at the Garden, his team playing its most complete game of the playoffs while recording a 2-1 victory. But he is the one who had made that possible, having been outstanding in the first two games in Montreal, which the teams split — and which the Rangers almost swept, with Lundqvist making a career-high 54 saves in Game 2 when they had a 3-2 lead with under 20 seconds to go in regulation, eventually losing in overtime.
Though Lundqvist might not be as clear as Stepan in describing the matchup, he surely knows the caliber of the goalie in the other net.
“When you’re competing against the best, you need to work harder,” Lundqvist said. “That’s why you’re here. You want to compete. You want to measure yourself against one of the best goalies in the world.”
Through the first four games, Lundqvist has a .944 save percentage, stopping 134 of 142 shots faced. Price has matched with a .942 save percentage on a much smaller workload (114 of 121).
And the start of these playoffs has been almost a revival for Lundqvist after a regular season that had some uneven play, some injuries and hardly any of the natural rhythm of his regular routine.
“I had too many games where I was just OK,” he said, “but I definitely had stretches where I felt like I was playing my game.”
Most notably, that was down the stretch of the regular season, when Lundqvist returned from a hip injury that kept him out almost three weeks and found his game rather quickly. That allowed him to enter the playoffs with confidence, knowing he had to be on top of his game if the Rangers had a chance to beat Price and the Atlantic Division-winning Canadiens.
“They’re not gonna give up a lot, you know that in the back of your head, but that can’t change your approach,” Lundqvist said. “As a goalie, you can’t do more. You have to approach it the same way, and I think the key is not to try and do too much. You try and play your game.”
Lundqvist is nothing if not a rabid competitor, and his teammates feed off that. He is very aware of the surrounding circumstances, which includes whom he is playing against and where. So even if he tries to downplay it, the guys in the locker room with him know exactly how much he wants to win, especially in the playoffs.
“I’ve been around him long enough to know, even this year when his back kind of got pushed against the wall when he just turned it on — he’s a competitor, he competes like a crazy man,” Stepan said. “To have an opportunity to go against one of the best in the world, that’s gonna be right up his alley and he loves that.
“He hasn’t said it, so don’t make me look like a bad guy here and say that he said it, but I know that he enjoys it. I’ve been around him long enough to know. Look at the big stages he’s played on. He loves this stuff.”
Even more so, Lundqvist loves being on the big stage and winning. He has given his team a chance to come back from a desultory Game 3 performance, and now he has given them a chance to advance with a best-of-three in front of them.
“It’s back to where I want it to be,” he said about his performance. “I feel like I’m playing my game.”