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Rangers are King Henrik's court now

Arthur Staple

1:04 PM EDT, October 3, 2008

Henrik Lundqvist, this is your time.

The Rangers goaltender has been very, very good through his first three seasons -- all playoff seasons -- and only Mike Richter can make that same claim on the very small list of elite Rangers goaltenders.

The list is so small, in fact, that Lundqvist can stake his claim to being the best Rangers goaltender if he can earn a Stanley Cup win. He's 26, armed with a $41-million deal signed in February and his team is in desperate need of a huge year from him.

Jaromir Jagr was supposed to be the headliner of Saturday's opening act, a two-game set with the woeful Lightning in Prague. Jagr wasn't wanted back, so he's in Siberia -- well, Russia, actually, but he's out of sight now.

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Brendan Shanahan badly wanted back in, but there seems to be no room on the Rangers for him. Sean Avery took his act to Dallas, though he did leave us a few Gap ads overlooking the LIE, which was nice of him.

Chris Drury will likely be the new captain, Scott Gomez the new deputy. Markus Naslund and Wade Redden are the new faces. Not a show-stopper among them.

No, this is King Henrik's court now, officially. He's the Rangers' Marty Brodeur, in name if not goaltending style, and it's time for Lundqvist to be more consistent and more durable.

Lundqvist has taken steps forward each of his three seasons. His 10 shutouts led the NHL a season ago, and his 72 appearances tied Richter for the most in a season by a Ranger.

The place where Lundqvist hasn't been king, though, is the playoffs. Pittsburgh's Marc-Andre Fleury outplayed Lundqvist in May, in a winnable series against the Penguins, who are still the darling pick of a wide-open Eastern Conference.

Lundqvist's three-year body of work -- three Vezina Trophy finalist nominations, 104 regular-season wins, 17 shutouts -- stands up to anyone else's, Brodeur included. But it's the playoffs that matter, especially around here, where "playoffs" was a dirty word until recently.

So, Lundqvist's 11-9 record the past two seasons is not up to par. The second-round losses to the Sabres in 2007 and the Penguins last year are not befitting an elite goaltender.

Lundqvist needed cortisone shots in both knees prior to training camp, with one of the knees injured in that Pittsburgh series.

Let Tom Renney and the Rangers braintrust take a lesson from Brodeur and the Devils, then, and make sure Lundqvist gets his rest, the way Brodeur never seems to do for the Devils, who aren't the playoff threat they were a few years ago. There's no shame in playing 60-65 games instead of 70-75. The Rangers' problem, of course, is that they've needed every point down the stretch the past three seasons, so resting at the end isn't a luxury they can afford.

Rest him early. Lundqvist will surely play both ends of this back-to-back Czech weekend opener, and these are the first two games, so there's no harm in that. But the Rangers have Friday-Saturday games each of the next three weeks. It wouldn't hurt to let Lundqvist save himself for the heart of the season, and beyond, into the spring.

Lundqvist has been a key to the Rangers' success the last three seasons. It's time for him to be the key to a breakthrough.