Le roi Henrik est officiellement membre du Temple de la renommée !
That's Hall of Famer Henrik Lundqvist to you. 👑
Congratulations to a legend. pic.twitter.com/VAxJbRvmSJ
— New York Rangers (@NYRangers) June 21, 2023
—
fpGrumms
@Rangers de New York
16 Comments
Happy
We all knew it was coming but man does it feel good! Congrats to an absolute legend on AND off the ice.
Infinitely well deserved.
Especially considering his international resume which includes an Olympic gold and silver, a WC gold and 2 silvers, and hell even a gold in inline hockey. Could have probably had a WJC gold if his team didn’t record 1 and 0 goals in the medal rounds
But regarding the NHL, for the life of me, I will never understand the bizarre timidity Rangers fans have when discussing Lundqvist. Any fair minded all-time great list should have him.
To look closer at the stats of his career for some perspective:
**For the rankings compared to his peers**
Probably most clearly, GSAx/60 rankings. Essentially, goals saved above expected per 60 minutes, so looking at the saves, adjusting for the difficulty of the shots, normalizing for time, and seeing the year by year rank. For a portrait of where you might expect a top tier goalie to stand, here are some of his best contemporaries and potential HOF candidates, Price, Rinne, and (1st all-decade team LMAO) Fleury.
Price (starting 2008, leaving out 2016 due to injury): 6th, 18th, 19th, 8th, 23rd, 24th, 2nd, 1st, 6th, 29th, 13th, 20th
Rinne (starting 2009, leaving out 2014 due to injury): 7th, 14th, 10th, 24th, 22nd, 14th, 31st, 19th, 4th, 6th, 21st
Fleury (starting 2009, leaving out 2017 due to injury): 22nd, 24th, 15th, 25th, 14th, 28th, 16th, 16th, 5th, 17th, 25th
Hank (starting 2008, leaving out no years): 3rd, 3rd, 1st, 2nd, 1st, 1st, 3rd, 5th, 1st, 14th, 13th, 15th, 10th
This is generally considered one of the better ways to measure a goalie, and according to it, Hank was the best goalie in four separate seasons, was top 3 in 8 seasons, top 5 in 9 seasons, and even after his decline, never was a below average starter. For a nine year stretch, he provided absolutely top tier play. Seriously, there’s a reason people say goalies are voodoo – most goalies are average to bad most years, and most excellent goalies have few excellent years and a few bad years.
If you were to take the top 8 seasons of these top goalies, Hank’s average ranking is 1.875, Price’s is 9.125, Rinne’s is 11.875, and Fleury’s is 19.25 (seriously wtf Flower, if you were half as good as your reputation you’d have seven cups)
Even when it became time to move on, he still wasn’t performing below average, it was only because we had the goalies ranked 2nd and 7th also on the team (thank you Allaire and the scouts).
Credit to JFresh, and [here](https://twitter.com/JFreshHockey/status/1244320959756210179) are the charts of this data to visualize it better
**For the raw numbers**
See [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/rangers/comments/eipjnr/comment/fcsu6y8/), for the best breakdown (thanks /u/chocolatealmondfudge). Lundqvist leads in GSAx/60 among everyone, so that’s after adjusting for workload, which he had the heaviest, which should work against him. It’s not a case of a goalie with a few hot high-end years here and there, or a high peak, he was consistently the best. Lundqvist is at 0.364, and only one other goalie was above 0.207.
See [here](https://i.redd.it/9x827woo39841.jpg). This was an analysis for the all-decade team. In total, over the last decade or so, Hank is off the charts, in a league of his own. His numbers, already the best, jump in the playoffs, showing that he was better and increased the margin by which he was the best when it mattered more
From the ESPN article ranking the best players of the decade, which placed him 5th, « his 242.1 goals saved above average is over 75 more than the next player on the list. »
This chart pretty much says it all, with 2007-2018 as the parameters: https://i.imgur.com/u22CtZm.png (thanks u/qua-1). Note, the x axis isn’t even zero. Most of the goalies are BELOW 0, and he’s at 230.
WAR is a bit of a tough stat to use in hockey, but from 2007 onward, Hank’s is 57.2 wins above replacement, which is 20 more than the second highest, Price, at 37. And wins above replacement is just vs an average, replacement level, goalie. Meaning average is 0. He brought us enough wins for a top-3-during-his-career-season’s worth of wins.
In goals above expected from 07-08 to the end of his career, Lundqvist stopped 278 goals more than the average NHL goalie. Second place is Halak, at 90. Over three times the second place finisher, and an elite offense’s season’s worth of goals prevented vs the average goalie.
Note, these numbers don’t go before 07-08, so they don’t even include Hank’s first two years, in which he was 3rd in Vezina voting both times, was an all-star both times, and was 9th and 22nd in Hart voting. These elite numbers EXCLUDE two elite seasons.
**For the playoffs**
Lundqvist’s rankings in the playoffs according to GSAx/60: 1st, 3rd, 1st, 3rd, 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 12th, 8th. In short, the entire time the Rangers were a contending team, Hank was a top or the top goalie in the playoffs. He essentially had one bad playoff series in his career, and a couple of dozen great ones.
See [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/rangers/comments/eipjnr/comment/fcsu6y8/) again. With minimum 30 games, Lundqvist is the leader in GSAx/60 at 0.467, with second place all the way down at 0.381. Hank was the best playoff goalie of the era by a larger margin than he was the best regular season goalie of the era
Fun stat for elimination games and game 7s: « Over his last 20 elimination games, ‘The King’ is 15-5, a record that dates back to Game 6 of New York’s 2012 first round series versus Ottawa. Over that stretch, he has posted two shutouts and an impressive 1.74 goals against average. Even more remarkably, Lundqvist is 10-1 in his last 11 games on the brink, with an eye-opening 1.05 goals against average. » (Thanks Bardown)
~~For Game 7s: « Lundqvist holds an impressive 6-2 record and boasts a .958 save percentage in these intense games » (Thanks BlueShirtBanter)~~ edit: BSB is wrong. It’s a .961 save percentage
**In the playoffs, over the course of Hank’s career, the Rangers are 3rd worst in goals per game, beating out only the Panthers and the Wild. Over the course of Hank’s career, the Rangers are 3rd worst in expected goals against per game, beating out only the Coyotes and Oilers. So on average, Rangers playoff teams had a bottom 3 defense and bottom 3 offense compared to everyone else’s playoff teams. Those are the kind of playoff rosters this organization has produced for him. That is INSANE and one of the most egregious cases of a front office wasting a player’s career in all of sports.**
Really, how half the fanbase just kind of forgot and just shrugs at this point and says « yeah he was good, but I guess he wasn’t anything special, because cups »
Maybe it’s the impact of how bad hockey media is where the two streams of logic basically go:
Cup > good
Wins > Vezina > good
And that’s the end of the analysis. Or perhaps it’s the influence of the same r/hockey filter being applied to Hank through which they turn Jacob Trouba into Chris Simon. Don’t get it
You’d think watching Adin Hill and Pavel Francouz come in in relief for the past two cup champs and just win repeatedly would demonstrate the importance of having a team that can, you know, score goals and/or stop the other team from trying to. Hill was good, Colorado’s goaltending was sabotaging them – over 5 goals allowed more than they should have, and the team went 16-4. The scoring ~2 goals per game more than Rangers playoff teams did really helps.
Vasy is a beast too, sure, but it sure must be nice to have a guy who scored as many goals in their first cup run as our playoff ghost Rick Nash did in his entire Rangers career…and then do the same thing in the second cup run. Having a guy like that, on top of the Hart/Art Ross/Pearson winner, Norris winner and perennial finalist, and multiple time Rocket Richard winner, and then adding on the best skater Hank had in front of him. Seriously, imagine this team having multiple PPG+ forwards in the playoffs. You can’t do it.
The number of cornerstone franchise players cup winners tend to have puts this team and its abysmal front office to shame. Seriously, who are the best players we had during our cup window who played more than ~300 games in front of Hank? McDonagh? Zuccarello? Mac went to another team and became their 5th best skater at best. I adore Zucc, he’s not THE GUY for a cup caliber team. Hell, imagine having Eichel, Mackinnon, Point, Crosby, Toews, Kopitar, or Bergeron as your 1C instead of Derek Stepan, or Chara, Makar, Keith, Hedman, Letang, or Doughty instead of Ryan McDonagh
In summary, he was better than all of his contemporaries, in an era with other good goaltenders, he maintained his better play longer than anyone, he elevated his game even further to be better by even more when the stakes were raised, and it wasn’t even close. Anyone who thinks he doesn’t deserve any accolade is wrong.
Until next year this is my Stanley cup
I was here.
Ya we all knew it. People got to remember it is the Hockey Hall of fame. Not the NHL Hall of Fame. So you add his international stats to his NHL stats , straight no brained.
my favorite hockey player of all time. Crazy to think that I watched him as a rookie, and now hes in the HOF.
The way it was destined to be from the very beginning.
The GOAT Rangers Goalie. Unbelievable career even without the cup (sadly) this is well deserved.
Hopefully the induction will be shown live. It will be great to see another Ranger in the Hall.
A seventh round pick in 2000, Hall of Famer in 2023. Everything in between is the reason he’s King
Let’s fucking go!!!!!!!
I had no doubt!
Long Live the King!
It needs to be understood just how this man single handedly carried the Rangers during his time. It proves 1 man really can make a difference.
WE’RE GOING STREAKING!!
Fuck I wish he got to raise the cup