Henrik Lundqvist – Page 6 – Keefe To The City

Jan 27, 2015

The 2014-15 NHL All-Animosity Team

This year’s team is a little different, but there are some familiar faces in the lineup, including a goalie on his way out of the league.

NHL All-Star Weekend has always held a special place in my heart. My feelings about a skills competition and an exhibition game in which there’s no physicality, defense or anything that resembles NHL hockey other than nasty dangles are probably unshared. But when you’re a kid growing up with stars like Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Ray Bourque and Brian Leetch and watching them wear those black and orange gems each winter on a weekend afternoon, it’s something that stays with you.

Even though Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin weren’t in Columbus this weekend and Henrik Lundqvist was home in favor of goalies of much lesser abilities (Hi, Jaroslav Halak), I still watched and still paid attention to the 60th NHL All-Star Game, the first in three years. Well, I paid more attention to the skills competition than the game, but I still paid attention. And since I don’t always agree with the selections for the All-Star Game, a couple of years ago I decided to build my own version of an All-Star team. The one difference is that this team is built up of players I don’t like.

(Of course the first time since I started creating these teams that Brian Boyle is eligible to be on it, he isn’t.)

FORWARDS

Milan Lucic
Welcome back, once again! After leading the 2012-13 team and 2013-14 team, Lucic is back on the 2014-15 team.

It wasn’t long ago that Lucic was considered to be Cam Neely 2.0 in Boston following his 30-goal regular season in the Bruins’ Cup winning 2010-11 season. But after watching his goal totals decline over the last three years, Lucic has just nine goals in 47 games for the Bruins this year. Instead of hearing from Boston about Lucic’s all-around game, it’s more likely you’ll hear about Lucic connected to trade rumors. During the Bruins’ struggles around the holidays, the Boston sports media was hoping they could create some package involving Lucic to send him to Edmonton in exchange for Taylor Hall because every team is willing to give away their former No. 1 overall pick for a power forward in the middle of a three-plus year slide. (Actually, Edmonton would be the team willing to do that.)

The Bruins have cap issues and because of this, Lucic could be playing for another team in 2015-16, and judging by every team’s eagerness to give out bad contracts and throw money at any and every free agent, teams will be lining up to offer Lucic a big payday. If he plays himself out of Boston and off the Bruins, there might not be a place for him on the All-Animosity Team going next year, but his three-year run on the team will always be a memorable one.

Alexander Ovechkin
My animosity toward Ovechkin has declined since Sidney Crosby officially won the Crosby-Ovechkin Debate (which was never really much of a debate anyway) and I no longer have to spend time and energy defending and supporting the best player in the world against a pure goal scorer, who couldn’t care less about what happens in his own zone.

In the Road to the NHL Winter Classic on EPIX, Capitals owner Ted Leonsis referred to Ovechkin as the most pouplar athlete of the four majors sports in Washington D.C. and I questioned it at first, but when put against Bryce Harper, Robert Griffin III and John Wall, I agreed with Leonsis. After watching Ovechkin attend the Wizards game in the EPIX series and seeing him act like a normal person and not a four-time 50-plus goal scorer and one-time 65-goal scorer, I actually kind of liked him. And then watching him hope to be the last pick in the All-Star Game to win a free car, despite being possibly the best pure scorer in the world, I actually liked him a little more. I’m a Crosby guy and always will be, but maybe there’s room to be a fan of both? Maybe Ovechkin’s personality is playing him off this team?

I’m sure I will be back to being anti-Ovechkin in March when the Rangers and Capitals play again and he spends the entire night taking shots at every Ranger on the ice. Even though I will annoyed, it will put a smile on my face that my animosity toward Ovechkin is back.

Brad Marchand
I had to figure out a way to make room for Brad Marchand on the team and that meant either cutting Alexander Ovechkin or Chris Kunitz. I didn’t cut Ovechkin, even though I actually don’t have as much out-of-game animosity toward him as I do for Kunitz. By “out-of-game” animosity, I mean that I don’t mind Ovechkin when he’s not playing a game against the Rangers, or a playoff game, and putting fear into me every time he’s on the ice or every time the Capitals get a power play. Kunitz, on the other hand, makes me angry to just think about since his career has taken off with the Penguins thanks to playing with Sidney Crosby, yet people continue to consider among the league’s elite players, which was never more true when he was given a spot on Team Canada in the 2014 Olympics. I thought about putting Kunitz on D for this team and sort of making a power-play unit out of the team, but then I decided … actually, wait, that’s a great idea! Put Kunitz on defense and cut Dion Phaneuf, who couldn’t be any more irrelevant as the captain of the downfall of the Maple Leafs.

Marchand is the ultimate player who you hate to watch your team play against, but would love if he were on your team. He’s dirty and annoying, he’s a pest and nuisance, but he’s good. Or at least he can be good. There are stretches where you wonder why it looks like he doesn’t care and other stretches where he’s involved in every play and leading an unstoppable forecheck. His lapses in judgment and total disregard for player safety are what makes him hated and in the Rangers-Bruins game on Jan. 15, there he was earning a two-game suspension for slew-footing Derick Brassard (a technique that Marchand turns to frequently). The only thing worse than Marchand’s antics in that game were Jack Edwards and Andy Brickley calling the game for NESN and saying they didn’t see a slew-foot.

DEFENSEMEN

Zdeno Chara
I don’t know how Chara would feel knowing that on this team Milan Lucic wears the “C” instead of him, but if he were upset about it, I would have no problem throwing an “A” on his jersey for him.

It’s weird to think that the Bruins will retire Chara’s number one day considering the team they were when they signed him and the team they have become now seven years later. But Chara is as big of a reason as anyone in the Bruins’ turnaround from finishing the 2006-07 season with 76 points to eventually winning the Cup and being in another Cup Final. It felt like it would be at least another three decades until the Bruins won again when Chara arrived in Boston and he should be recognized for … wait a second … this is supposed to be about why I don’t like Chara. In that case, let me repurpose what I said about him last year:

Jack Edwards will likely tell you that Chara is the best defenseman in the league, but he’s the same guy who thinks fights are decided by whichever plays ends up on top of the other player on the ice. Is there anything worse than when broadcasters talk about Chara’s 108-mph slap shot in the Skills Competition in a real game? No, there’s not. Because there are a lot of times in real games when you get to sprint untouched from the blue into a still puck in the slot and rip a bomb into an open net. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg that is the lovefest for the 6-foot-9, one-time Norris Trophy winner.

Chris Kunitz
The Rangers’ 3-1 series comeback against the Penguins in the Eastern Conference semifinals last year was an amazing five days, in which any shot, bad bounce or deflection could have ended the Rangers’ season a month earlier than it lasted. And aside from the jubilation from watching the Rangers come back against a team that had its way with the Rangers in the postseason forever, came the jubilation of watching Chris Kunitz score once in the series.

I moved Kunitz back on D on this team just to keep him on and it was a move I had to make after originally thinking of leaving him off this year’s roster. But the more I thought about him and the more I thought about him putting up stats and getting paid as the product of playing on a line with the best player of this generation, I had to find a way to keep him on the team.

When I was in college in Boston, there was a place called New York Pizza next to the Boston Common on Boylston St. that I would always eat at 2 a.m. at the earliest when I wasn’t exactly sober. I swore to everyone that visited me that New York Pizza was the best pizza in Boston and every person I told this to agreed with me because I would take them there after a night of drinking. It wasn’t until one time when I went to New York Pizza in the middle of the day and had a slice and could barely get two bites down that I realized that the alcohol had masked the true taste of the pizza. Chris Kunitz’s career pre-Sidney Crosby was me eating New York Pizza sober in the middle of the day and Chris Kunitz’s career with Sidney Crosby has been me eating New York Pizza drunk.

Last year, I said, “I feel like you could stick pretty much anyone and I don’t mean just any NHL player, but rather any actual person on a line with Crosby and they would be good for 15-20 goals,” and I believe that to be 100 percent true. And because that’s true, let’s stop pretending that Chris Kunitz is the type of player that he isn’t.

GOALIE

Martin Brodeur
Like last year … was there any other choice? And unless you’re a Devils fan or have changed your stance on the Ten Commandments, then you will agree with Brodeur as the starting goalie once again.

Yes, I stole that line from myself from last year. And maybe there were other choices (cough, cough, Carey Price, cough, cough), but with Brodeur set to retire on Thursday after trying to play at the age of 42 for the St. Louis Blues, it made sense to bring him back one more time.

Rather than ride off into the sunset as a lifetime Devil, who could have enjoyed a final game in New Jersey last season, Brodeur had to come back this season. After 1,259 games with the Devils, his stats will always have those glaring seven games at the bottom of the list. Sure, he added three more wins to his all-time record of 691 wins, but it’s unlikely that number will ever get touched, so instead of leaving it at 688, it’s now at 691 with a little bit of stink on it.

There are some players that are just supposed to play for one franchise forever and Brodeur is one of those players, considering he has been on the Devils since I was in kindergarten. Yes, I said KINDERGARTEN! Very rarely does a Ray Bourque-like move work out and instead it just gets weird when someone like Brian Leetch, who was a Ranger for 17 years, ends up playing 15 games for the Maple Leafs and 61 games for the Bruins at the end of his career.

I also said that about Brodeur last year and now that he’s no longer a one-team career guy, it’s a shame that he put on another jersey in an attempt to try to hang on to the only thing he has known to do in the winter for his whole life. I thought Martin Brodeur would retire at the end of last year and he should have. But now that he will make it official on Thursday (barring another Roger Clemens-like midseason comeback) it’s time for me to say it again:

I will miss Martin Brodeur when he retires, but my animosity for him will stay the same.

Podcasts • Rangers

Jul 9, 2014

Podcast: Brian Monzo

Brian Monzo joined me to talk about the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since it ended and the departure of Benoit Pouliot, Anton Stralman and Brian Boyle.

The Rangers’ last game was 28 days ago and therefore we have been without hockey for 28 days. But the best part about having your team reach the Stanley Cup Final, other than playing for the Cup, is extending the season so long that next season doesn’t feel that far away. And with the Rangers playing until mid-June, we got the NHL Awards, the NHL Draft and the start of free agency all immediately following the devastating Game 5 loss.

WFAN Mike’s On: Francesa on the FAN producer Brian Monzo joined me to talk about the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since it ended, the ridiculous contract Benoit Pouliot received from the Oilers and whether it matters that Anton Stralman and Brian Boyle signed with the Lightning.

Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Playoffs

Jun 26, 2014

Finality from the Final

The 2013-14 Rangers season lasted 107 games and ended in a devastating defeat, but it was one incredible ride over nearly nine months.

I lied. Prior to the start of the Stanley Cup Final I said I wouldn’t care if the Rangers won or lost. I said I was just happy that they were there, that they were playing the last hockey of the 2013-14 season and that they had given me two additional months of hockey that I hadn’t prepared for. But 12 days ago when Ryan McDonagh hit the post, Chris Kreider couldn’t score once again on a breakaway and Rick Nash couldn’t find an open net, I knew that a Stanley Cup loss was inevitable. And when Alec Martinez started a 3-on-2 with Kyle Clifford and Tyler Toffoli that looked like it had jumped off the page of an odd-man rush textbook, finishing with a perfect create-a-rebound-opportunity shot, my fear of the inevitable was realized. Henrik Lundqvist fell to the ice as if his body had finally given out from the burden of carrying the entire Rangers team and organization through the series and the playoffs and the last nine seasons.

Finality had been in Madison Square Garden for Game 7 against the Flyers in the quarterfinals. It was with the Rangers in Pittsburgh in Game 5, traveled with them to New York for Game 6 and back to Pittsburgh again in Game 7. It never presented itself in the Eastern Conference finals, but it was there at the Garden in Game 4 of the Final and would be with them the rest of the way. Up until Martinez carried the puck from the top of the circle in his own zone, through the neutral zone and passed it to Clifford just before the Rangers’ blue line, the Rangers had overcome finality five times in the last six weeks.

In each of those five instances, I went into the game knowing that it could be the last Rangers game of the season, but once the Rangers’ season and NHL season was put on the brink starting in Game 4 of the Final, I started to get nostalgic and look back at the 2013-14 season. The firing of John Tortorella. The hiring of Alain Vigneault. The disastrous West Coast trip to start to the season. The entire embarrassing month of October. The beginning of their climb back. The Henrik Lundqvist extension. The Stadium Series. The debate on what to do with Ryan Callahan. The Ryan Callahan trade. The Martin St. Louis era. The grind to get in the playoffs. The Flyers series. The Penguins series. The Canadiens series. And then the Stanley Cup Final.

I started to think about all the things that needed to happen for the Rangers to reach the Cup for the first time since I was in second grade. I started to think about the post-postseason summer and offseason and training camp and 82-game, seven-month regular-season schedule that would need to happen before the next time playoff hockey would be back. And that’s when I realized I lied.

I realized I had lied because while getting to the Cup is certainly an achievement (especially for a team that finished fifth in the East and didn’t know if they would even be in the playoffs just a couple weeks before the playoffs started and needed to win a first-round Game 7 and overcome a 3-1 series deficit in the second round) getting that far and not winning is crushing. You never know when, or if, your team is ever going to get back to that point (Hello, Toronto) and when you’re there, you need to make the most of it. I’m sure Rangers fans in June of 1994 didn’t think it would take 20 more Junes for the Rangers to reappear in the Final. For the four obstacles I just mentioned that the Rangers had to overcome, for the Kings to reach the Final, they had to overcome a 3-0 first-round series deficit and win three road Game 7s, which included overcoming a two-goal deficit in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals to knock off the defending champions in overtime. The parlay that has to be hit to reach the Stanley Cup Final makes my head hurt to think about and the parlay that has to be hit to win it is difficult to even fathom.

The Final only lasted five games, but it felt more like a seven-game series. It felt more seven-game-ish than the series against the Flyers and Penguins felt, but that’s likely because of what was at stake. And even though history will show that the Kings won the 2013-14 Stanley Cup Final 4-1, for those who watched it and those who were invested in at as either a Rangers or Kings fan will know it was much closer. And if it wasn’t for Dan Girardi, some posts, the Rangers’ inability to score on a breakaway and blown leads in Games 1, 2 and 5, the series could have been different and the Canyon of Heroes could have been used this June for something other than a place for all the suits who work in the area to walk to buy their $12 salads for lunch.

You always think your team can contend and win a championship even if you’re being optimistic and know winning the last game of the NHL season is unrealistic. Entering the 2013-14 season I was optimistic about the Rangers’ Cup chances and as the season carried on, the dream became more and more unrealistic and the 2013-14 Rangers looked like six of the eight Rangers team since the lockout: destined for a first- or second-round exit. Down the stretch of the regular season, I kept saying, “Just get in” and once they were in and the playoffs started, I became overly confident and optimistic again, believing that because of Henrik Lundqvist the team could make a run like many other average and above-average teams had done with elite goaltending.

The Rangers’ run was because of Henrik Lundqvist, who proved to the irrational critics of the world that he could carry a team to the Final, even if once he got there, it was his own team that eventually beat him. And it will be Henrik Lundqvist who is remembered for April, May and June 2014 and for bringing the Rangers back to a place they hadn’t been in so long and close to a place they now know they can get to.

I can’t wait to try to do it all again next season.

Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Playoffs

Jun 12, 2014

Why Not the Rangers?

It’s been almost 10 years since I was on the wrong side of a 3-0 comeback. But after the Game 4 win in the Stanley Cup Final, why not the Rangers?

I can still hear the sound. As Ruben Sierra’s weak grounder on a 1-0 pitch from Alan Embree bounced slowly to Pokey Reese, the sound started. The sound was a compilation of 86 years of failure coming to a climax after coming back down 3-0 in the ALCS to the team that had caused many of those 86 years of failure. And that compilation of misery turned disbelief shook my 11th-floor dorm room in downtown Boston.

I sat in a folding camping chair in my room staring out the window with my friend Scanlon, the only other Yankees fan I knew and knew of in the 19-floor dorm, sitting in a folding camping chair to my left. The room was dark except for the flashing images of the 2004 Red Sox celebrating on the Yankee Stadium mound that illuminated our devastated faces while the hallway outside the room sounded as if the school had announced that tuition would be free for the entire four years of college. And outside the building on the streets of Boston, the sound, which I can only compare to what the end of the world would sound like, filled the entire city.

Three days prior I watched Kevin Millar work a leadoff walk against Number 42. Dave Roberts pinch ran for Millar, stole second and Bill Mueller singled him in and three innings after that, I watched Joe Torre think it would be a good idea to have Paul Quantrill pitch to David Ortiz. Red Sox fans let me know they weren’t dead, but I knew they were. For as overly confident as the city of Boston had suddenly become, I kept telling myself, “They have to win three more games before we win one.”

The next day I found tickets to Game 5 online for the price of basically my entire first-semester spending money I had saved working that summer. I figured, “I have a chance to watch the Yankees win the pennant in person in Boston” and that was enough for me to call my friend Jim and have him drive to Boston in record time using I-95 North as if it were The Brickyard along the way. I went to the then-Fleet Bank ATM next to the Park Street T stop, withdrew nearly all the money in my bank account and headed to Kenmore to meet some sketchy guy in an old Ford Explorer down a side street a few blocks from Fenway Park. After a Tom Gordon meltdown and five hours and 49 minutes of baseball, the Yankees lost again and I left Fenway wondering how I would buy beer until Christmas break, but when it came to baseball, I reassured myself, “They have to win two more games before we win one.”

The next night, Joe Torre decided he wouldn’t have anyone attempt to bunt against Curt Schilling on one leg and the night after that it all came crashing down. It was Terry Francona, who kept his team loose and got the Yankees on the run after Game 4, but it was Schilling’s question, “Why not us?” that got me thinking back then about the possibility of an historical collapse and got me thinking about it again this past Monday night.

The Rangers could have won Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final. They could have won Game 2. And if they were able to protect the worst lead in hockey in either game, they would have. They could have returned to New York up 2-0 in the series against the dynasty-in-the-making Kings and even if they dropped both games at MSG, they would have been going back to L.A. with the series tied at two, and a best-of-3 scenario separating them and their first Cup in 20 years. But because of the Rangers’ frustrating play with a lead, disappointing effort in the third period and inability to finish in overtime, that hypothetical perfect picture of what could have been in this year’s Final never was.

With finality for the 2013-14 Rangers’ season looming (for a third time this postseason) after Game 3, the Rangers kept talking about how the bounces weren’t going their way and had one or two gone differently, they wouldn’t be in a 3-0 hole. They were right. Well, partially right. If Dan Girardi and Martin St. Louis didn’t try to play goalie and just let Henrik Lundqvist do his job, the job he is better at doing than anyone else in the entire world, Game 3 doesn’t go the way it did. And if the puck had bounced differently for Mats Zuccarello in Game 3 or if Chris Kreider or Carl Hagelin could successfully finish a breakaway or if NHL referees penalized goalie interference when it’s actually goalie interference and not be so quick to penalize players for it when it actually isn’t, then the Rangers wouldn’t have been looking at a 3-0 hole. In the world of “if,” the Rangers would have had a series lead after Game 3. But in that same world of “if,” I would have been asking Kevin Brown to toss a bottle of champagne to me in the Fenway stands after Game 5 and I wouldn’t have spent what is now almost a decade hating Javier Vazquez.

With the Kings’ commanding 3-0 series lead, we have heard about how well their current regime constructed the 2013-14 roster as well as the roster of the last three years and how they have become the model franchise in the NHL. Jeff Carter has been praised, Justin Williams has become a hero and Drew Doughty has become a household name because of the 3-0 lead. But those conversations and that praise wouldn’t be consuming the hockey world if the Sharks could have just won one of the final four games in the first round or if the Ducks had finished them off at home in Game 7 or if the Blackhawks had done the same. But in the same world of “if,” Alex Rodriguez’s career and entire life would have been different if Fenway Park had a real wall in right field and Tony Clark’s ground-rule double didn’t become “ground-rule” and Ruben Sierra wasn’t held at third base.

In Game 4, the bounces did go the Rangers way. It was the Rangers and Benoit Pouliot scoring on a deflection and it was Jeff Carter instead of Mats Zuccarello failing to push the puck over the goal line and it was Henrik Lundqvist’s crease and Derek Stepan’s glove saving the Rangers from allowing a heartbreaking tying goal in the final minute. The Rangers played their worst game of the Stanley Cup Final in Game 4 and came away with what is their only win of the series. They were outshot 41-19 and thoroughly dominated on even strength by the Kings, who looked like were on a 60-minute power play, controlling the play and puck possession, forcing me to watch the clock tick down slower than Mark Teixeira trying to score from first on a ball in the gap.

After the game, Henrik Lundqvist said, “We didn’t want to see the Cup coming out on our home ice,” as if the Rangers used that idea as their motivation to win. And maybe they did use it, but it was an odd thing to say considering how bad the Rangers played and the fact that aside from Lundqvist’s own effort and the help of the Hockey Gods stopping the puck on the goal line twice in the game, the Rangers did everything possible to make sure the Cup was presented to the Kings at Madison Square Garden after Game 4.

It’s been almost 10 years since I was in Boston for the 2004 ALCS and a 3-0 comeback that changed history. As I write this, I’m in Los Angeles, where I watched Game 4, surrounded by black and silver and fans wanting to see the Cup return to the beach for the second time in three years. And after Game 4 as the Rangers saluted the MSG crowd and the bar I was in at Hermosa Beach began to empty with long faces and dejected Kings fans wanting a reason to party on a Wednesday night and call out of work on a Thursday, I thought that maybe the Sports Gods decided, “We owe Neil a 3-0 series makeup call.” (Let’s hope they forgot they gave me Super Bowl XLII, which I watched in Boston.)

A few hours before Game 4, I was at a deli in Los Angeles where two Kings fans decked out in “Bow Down to the Crown” apparel spotted me wearing a Rangers shirt and said, “Sorry, man. Maybe next year,” in some what of a compassionate yet, sarcastic tone and I could hear my 18-year-old self back in 2004 in their tone. I knew they were thinking even if the Rangers won Game 4, they had to win four games before the Kings won once. And all I could think was, “They still have to win one more game.”

I can still hear the sound. I want to hear it on Wednesday night.

Podcasts • Rangers • Rangers Playoffs

Jun 6, 2014

Podcast: Brian Monzo

Brian Monzo of WFAN joins me to talk about how distraught he was after the Rangers’ Game 1 loss in the Stanley Cup Final and how his anger has turned to optimism for the series.

The Rangers haven’t looked as good as they did in the opening minutes of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final possibly all season. And after they took a 2-0 lead in the first 15:03 of the series, it looked like they might run away with the game at Staples Center. But then an awful Derek Stepan turnover, some bad Marc Staal defense and the worst decision of Dan Girardi’s life changed the game and the series.

WFAN Mike’s On: Francesa on the FAN producer Brian Monzo joined me to talk about how distraught he was after the Rangers’ loss, the turnovers that decided Game 1 and how his anger has turned to optimism for the series. And then Monzo broke down the Belmont Stakes at the end of the podcast.

Tag: Henrik Lundqvist

The 2014-15 NHL All-Animosity Team

Podcast: Brian Monzo

Finality from the Final

Why Not the Rangers?

Podcast: Brian Monzo