Hockey: Lundqvist suffered knee injury during world championships
Henrik Lundqvist suffered a knee injury while playing in the world championships last month and will need four to six weeks of rest and treatment, according to a Swedish newspaper report.
The Rangers’ No. 1 goaltender, 35, who won four games to help Team Sweden capture the gold medal, told Sport-Express that he played in pain from the ligament injury, which appears minor, during the semifinal against Finland.
Sweden beat Team Canada 2-1 in a shootout for the championship.
A Rangers spokesman said Lundqvist suffered “an isolated MCL sprain that he was able to play through in the championship game” and that the team does not expect “any disruption with his summer preparation/training and also expect no issues going forward.”
Lundqvist left New York for Europe days after the Rangers were eliminated in six games by the Ottawa Senators in the second round of the playoffs to play for Sweden, captained by his twin brother Joel, who invited him to the tournament.
He told the paper that he wouldn’t be back on the ice until the beginning of August in Gothenburg, where he and his wife and two daughters live in the summer.
In a translation of the article, Lundqvist says that on the morning of the gold-medal game in Cologne on May 21, “I did not think I could play; we did several treatments and I was in pain. Then we tested a syringe (injection) to see if the pain would disappear ... Without the syringe it was very bad ... the first half of the game went well, but then it got worse when the effect began to disappear. But I was just glad I could play.”
After the game, Lundqvist also was knocked on his back in the goal crease by a flying leap from celebrating teammate William Nylander, a Maple Leafs forward.
Lundqvist, who had a subpar season (31-20-4, 2.74 goals-against-average. .910 save percentage) given his accomplishments over the past 11 years, has four years remaining on his seven-year contract worth $59.5 million.