For Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist it was a busy summer, highlighted by his marriage in his hometown, Gothenburg, Sweden. But it was also a sad summer, marked by the death by overdose of his Rangers teammate Derek Boogaard, the apparent suicides of two other N.H.L. enforcers and the plane crash in Russia that killed the players and coaches of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl. Last week in a conversation with Jeff Z. Klein of The Times and Jeff Blair of The Globe and Mail, Lundqvist talked about his career, his hopes for the Rangers, and the shock of a sobering off season.
Henk, after the Rangers were eliminated in the first round last season you said that you felt your chance to win a Stanley Cup had become limited.
Yes, you do start to realize that your time is limited. I try to enjoy it at the same time — I realize I’m very lucky to be playing, and to be here in New York. But I realize, “O.K., I don’t have that many chances.” When you’re young you don’t think about your future. As you get older you start to realize you have to make the best of it. I was real disappointed last year. I was excited to be in the playoffs, but then it felt like we could have done better, starting with me. You always feel like you can play better.
So this summer I was anxious to see what’s going on. We had a lot of guys to sign. So it was big to see that we got most of the guys back, and then we signed Brad Richards. That was very exciting to see. I’m very excited about this year. There are a lot of things — the Europe trip, the Winter Classic, HBO, the home arena is a little different now too — a lot of things going on.
You mention the HBO series the Rangers will be on leading up to Winter Classic game vs. Philadelphia. Did you watch the HBO series last year with Pittsburgh and Washington?
I watched a few episodes last year. I thought they did a pretty good job. I’m in the games, so I know what’s going on, but for a guy that hadn’t really paid attention to the game or hadn’t known what’s going on, I think it’d be interesting to see how things work.
I hope we handle it well, but I don’t know how much they’re going to be in our face. Mentally you just have to prepare for it, to be able to block it out. Have fun with it off the ice, see it as a great experience and a fun thing. But when it comes to practice and games, the focus needs to be there.
Do you think Torts will save a few choice rants for the HBO cameras?
(Laughs) It’s going to be exciting to see how things play out. But like I said, it’ll be a great experience to have them around.
The plane crash in Yaroslavl — you knew Lokomotiv’s Swedish goalie, no?
Yes, I knew Stefan Liv. It’s crazy — I can’t believe that it happened. I played with Stefan for a lot of years on the national team. We had a good relationship. I saw him this summer in Gothenburg. Just a great, great guy. I also knew Karel Rachunek — he was here with the Rangers. Those two guys.
Someone asked me if it felt weird, flying. When you’re in there you can’t really control anything — you’re in someone else’s hands. You just have to accept it. I’m usually pretty comfortable flying. You always think this will never happen to you, but when it does happen, or to someone close to you, it makes you think.
Have there been flights where you’ve been worried?
I’m not going to lie. I played with the junior national team in Russia probably 10 years ago or so, and the plane maybe wasn’t what I was used to. The seats were just folding like this (gestures to indicate a seat flopping back and forth). They didn’t really care if we had seat belts. It was just a really different style of flying. But I heard they have great pilots in Russia. You just never really know about security or safety.
Because we fly so much, you always have a couple of incidents here or there. The Rangers a couple of years ago, we came in two or three times and couldn’t land. It felt like we touched the first two times, but I guess it was just the air bumping the plane — we were really close. I guess we got the wrong information from the tower because we were coming in from the wrong side and had too much side wind. The third time it was, “O.K., now we’ve got the right information,” and we came in from the other side. That was a little scary. You just have to deal with it. I’m usually relaxed, but if something happens there’s really not much you can do, unfortunately.
Where were you last May when you heard about Derek Boogaard?
Actually I was in the British Virgin Islands, and my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, got a text message saying he passed away. You get just a bad feeling in your stomach for hours, for days. It’s just a weird feeling. It’s hard to understand.
Did it come as a complete surprise to you?
Yeah, absolutely. It was a shock, definitely. Really sad, the way it happened.
You knew he was in substance abuse program and dealing with this?
Well, I knew he was in L.A. for a little bit. But he was just, you know, always when you saw him he was always such a nice person, and you felt like he was doing great. Then I didn’t see him for a couple months later in the season, he was gone. Then the season ended, and you think, ‘O.K., I’ll see him next season, and let’s start over after the concussion and have a great year.’
And then that happens, and it was shocking. It took me a couple days to realize it really happened. When someone passes away who’s close to you, it takes a while before you really realize he’s gone.
With Derek’s death and the deaths of Rick Rypien and Wade Belak this summer, will guys will look differently at enforcers now, maybe worry about them more?
Maybe it’ll be that guys make sure everybody’s feeling great, that if you see anything that doesn’t feel right with a guy, you’ll approach him. Doesn’t matter if you’re the goalie or the forward or the fighter or whatever, you just want to make sure that everyone’s having a great time. We play a great game and have a great life, and we’re lucky to do that. So hopefully it brings something good out of this bad stuff that happened, that we try to look after each other even more. Even now we try to be tight and look after each other, but obviously we can’t do it 24/7.
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