TORONTO – If you cut him, he will bleed. We know that know.
For his 11 years roaming royal blue paint in the National Hockey League, this was a fair question to pose with regard to King Henrik Lundqvist, the New York Rangers’ perfect-in-every-way goaltender.
Was he real? Did he have crisis of confidence? Did he battle doubts and demons and fear and (self) loathing just like the rest of us?
Or was he constantly humming to himself, sifting through his designer suits, looking contentedly in the mirror and every couple of nights or so stopping 92 per cent of the pucks that came his way like some kind of save-making robot with a beard that never grew?
But this season for the first time Lundqvist seemed not only mortal, but he was making people wonder if — at age 34 — he was done. All of this was on the table before the Rangers’ 5-2 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs, anchored by Lundqvist.
But it wasn’t just Win 393 of his career.
Goalies go through slumps. Coming into Thursday night’s game against the Leafs, Lundqvist was going through an existential crisis.
The man so used to hearing Rangers fans chant his name heard boos on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden while he was giving up seven goals in two periods.
Embarrassing, frustrating and disappointing were his adjectives of choice, and they fit. What does rock bottom look like through his piercing blue eyes?
How about 20 goals on his last 113 shots prior to last night.
This wasn’t a swoon. It was an unravelling.
Standing in the south end of the Air Canada Centre for the first period against a hot Leafs team, the man who had been the Rangers’ bedrock for 11 years was suddenly looking like a pasta strainer, his .902 save percentage trending towards a career worst. He was racking up stinker goals and struggling with the borderline tough saves that elite goalies make a living by stopping.
So when he was able to get a glove on a deflected point shot 40 seconds into the game it wasn’t just a clever bit of goaltending, it was a salve on frayed nerves.
"There’s no doubt that was huge right off the bat," said Rangers coach Alain Vigneault later. "That was good for Hank, it was good for the whole team."
It wasn’t a vintage performance. It wasn’t Lundqvist circa 2012. But among his 23 stops were several key saves. There was progress. This was a win and a chance to breath.
"It was a big game for me, it was a big game for the team, to respond," said Lundqvist, holding court in the visitors’ dressing room sporting a black pork pie hat, his only nod to style on a night that was all about substance. "Sometimes a win means a little bit more. You play 82 games and some wins, right away you put it in your bag, but I think today you enjoy it a little extra with what I’ve been through the last week or so. It’s not fun as a goalie to give up a lot of goals. You try to stay confident, I told the guys I want to be there for the group and make the difference when they need me to, but sometimes it’s a fast game and a lot of things happen in front of you that you don’t expect but as a goalie you need to react in a good way and come up with the saves. Today, it was better."
The Leafs tested him, even if they only managed to get 25 shots on net. What they lacked in volume they made up for in quality.
In the first period he had to contend with a point-blank chance by a rushing Auston Matthews and a sharp one-timer by William Nylander. He had no chance on Tyler Bozak’s goal — a bang-bang play off a blind pass from the corner by Mitch Marner that briefly tied the score 1-1.
In the second he got lucky on a rush by Marner who cut hard across the net from the left and tried to slip it back past a sliding Lundqvist but missed the net wide. A moment later the Rangers’ J.T Miller beat the Leafs’ Freddie Anderson from the faceoff circle and it was 3-1 New York.
But there wasn’t much time to relax. When Leafs winger Zach Hyman won a puck race on a penalty kill and found Leo Komarov wide open in front of the Rangers net, Lundqvist made the stop but had to look behind him to make sure it hadn’t squeaked through his five-hole as Komarov intended, but the job was done.
"Vintage Hank," said Rangers defenceman Dan Girardi. "He just closed his legs there and kept it out."
The only other blemish was also not something that could be pinned on goaltending as Hyman stripped Rangers defenceman Adam Clendening on the penalty kill a few moments later and won a waiting game with the Rangers goalie, flipping the puck over him when Lundqvist finally slid out of position.
But on the whole it was a game that Lundqvist could feel good about, something that’s been missing in this stretch of uncharacteristic humanness, and not just because the Rangers held the Leafs to just seven shots in the third period.
"When I’m in the situation I’m in, every save matters," said Lundqvist. "Every good decision, every good thing you do out there, you try to just … ‘OK, that’s a good action,’ and you try to build off that … because the way things have been going, it’s been a lot of bouncing around and not in the right way."
And make no mistake, the bad luck and sloppy technique and the Rangers’ porous defence in front him got to the King. The NHL player who has always seemed impervious to the kind of chaos that plagues everyone else in their lives was for once caught up in it.
For a brief moment his self-doubt was stirred; his confidence shaken.
"Yeah. I think every athlete and hockey player, you go through stretches where it’s just a lot harder to get it done, especially at this level," he said. "All it takes is you lose five, six per cent and that’s the difference between being OK and being great."
It’s just one win. He’s not declaring himself over whatever has afflicted him for most of the season. But he can see a glimmer of light. He’s stopped the bleeding. The NHL’s perfect man is beginning to feel more himself.