WASHINGTON _ Just before warmups on Wednesday, Henrik Lundqvist and Alex Ovechkin exchanged some pleasantries. Lundqvist was stretching on the Rangers bench. Ovechkin was on the ice, wearing a hoodie. Maybe the two world-class players were bemoaning the NHL's decision to participate in the Olympics. Maybe they were wishing each other luck in the playoffs.
The Capitals were on their way to a second consecutive President's Cup. Lundqvist, who had missed eight games with a hip muscle strain, simply needed the work in his fifth start since.
In his last four games, he had allowed 16 goals. On Wednesday, just two in a 2-0 loss at Verizon Center.
As it turned out, backing up a team with six regulars resting due to "bumps and bruises," according to coach Alain Vigneault, in order to give them a little extra time to heal, Lundqvist responded. He didn't win his 32nd game of the season, he didn't earn a shutout or make 40 saves.
But along with a scrappy effort from the replacements and some timely saves, Lundqvist had held the Capitals scoreless until late in second when, guess who, Ovechkin had the time and space to beat him.
With 20 seconds left on a power play for the team with the third best man-advantage stats in the NHL, it was Ovechkin, waiting and waiting with the puck before snapping a wrist shot past Kevin Klein and Lundqvist for his 34th goal of season and a 1-0 lead at 14:49. It was his league-leading 18th power-play goal.
Evgeny Kuznetsov split the defense and backhanded a shot past Lundqvist at 5:42 of the third, ending any suspense. After all, it was extremely doubtful that the Blueshirts, without Rick Nash, Ryan McDonagh, Mats Zuccarello, Brady Skjei, Jesper Fast and Nick Holden, were going to score much at Verizon Center. But Lundqvist made two more critical stops in the next few minutes.
"If our situation was where we needed the points, those (six) guys would be playing right now," Vigneault said. "Nothing's going to change for us, so you can give a little more ice time to some guys to make sure that those guys are 100 percent."
Without a doubt, Lundqvist, who made 23 saves, needs to be perhaps 110 percent for the Rangers to advance past the first round. He knows the landscape and the past. He cannot do it alone.
"It's a big week for us," Lundqvist had said, "to work on everything that's been helping us so far throughout the year. A lot of detail in our own end, and personally, the way you read the game. It's a pretty tough test for us, the best team in the league and you try to get some points. You play better when you're confident; to get there, if you can get a sixty-minute solid performance, you can get the feeling that we need. Take it period by period here. I can feel the improvement each game."
Said Lundqvist: "We set a goal going into this year, to make the playoffs, we all believe we can win the prize; we have the parts and the skill and now it's about making everything work at the same time, we need 20 guys to play their absolute best."
On a night when almost a third of the team was missing, No. 30 did his best.
