Next up for Henrik Lundqvist: The Hall of Fame

Henrik Lundqvist is a Hall of Fame goalie. Full stop. Miss me with your “he never won” argument because it’s silly. In terms of pure dominance, Lundqvist was the best goalie of this era, bar none. Any stat you look at, regular season and playoffs, it was Henrik Lundqvist, a large gap, and then Carey Price. HockeyStatMiner encapsulated it best:

This was in response to a silly tweet that said Lundqvist was closer to average than he was dominant, but hey sometimes the crazies come out of the woodwork. Let’s look at the rest of the resume:

• 459 wins (6th)
• 23,509 saves (7th)
• 887 GP (8th)
• 64 shutouts (17th)
• 2.43 GAA
• .918 SV% (see above)
• 1 Vezina
• 1 Olympic Gold
• 1 World Championship Gold

The Rangers missed the playoffs just once between 2005-2017 before the rebuild. In the playoffs, Hank shined, which is why those stilly “he never won” arguments lose any credibility. Lundqvist went 61-67 with those teams, which were largely carried by him, improving his numbers to a 2.30 GAA and .921 SV% with 10 shutouts.

Then there’s the stat: In elimination games, Lundqvist went 15-5 with a 1.74 GAA. It’s amazing that with that many wins, the Rangers never won it all, but that’s a depressing conversation for a different day. In Game 7’s Lundqvist put up an astounding 1.11 GAA and .961 SV%, so if you want to say he didn’t win a Cup, go blame someone else.

Lundqvist revolutionized the goaltender position, and is the the baseline in which true generational talents are defined. But that is subjective. When it comes to objective analysis, Lundqvist has the numbers and was an All World goalie for his entire career. Lundqvist will go into the Hall of Fame, likely on the first ballot.