King: I’m not going anywhere
HENRIK Lundqvist squashed any doubt about him remaining on the Rangers as the franchise rebuilds, replying “no” when asked if the team had approached him about waiving his no-move clause.
Lundqvist, who turns 36 on Friday and is under contract through 2020-21 with an annual $8.5 million cap hit, can control his fate and wants to stay as much as he did before signing his contract extension in 2013.
“I love this franchise, everything they do,” Lundqvist said Sunday morning after the Rangers traded Rick Nash to Boston. “Everything they do for the players, everything they’ve done with me for 13 years now. I just can’t see myself anywhere else, I really can’t. I hope this is something I will learn from and the rest of us will learn from, what we’re going through right now. And then I hope we’re gonna be a really competitive team real soon.”
Lundqvist started Sunday night for the first time in a week after the club raised Jean Ratelle’s No. 19 to the rafters, an honor surely in Lundqvist’s future. Always one to take losses hard because of his competitiveness, lately Lundqvist has struggled to deal with both team and individual setbacks on the ice. He was asked if, given the circumstances, he needs to dial back how much losing burns him.
“It’s a new approach, for sure. I’m not gonna lie, my spirit was a little broken there for a couple of weeks,” Lundqvist said. “You want to compete, and obviously when you know things are gonna change and not to compete for this year, it’s sometimes hard to deal with mentally, I think. But at the same time, you’ve got to go out and give everything you’ve got. That’s the least you can do, that’s the least everyone can do in here. No matter if we’re missing five or six regulars, whoever’s in here has to leave everything out there, and at the end of the day we’ll see where we are. But it’s definitely a new experience. Maybe dialing it back sometimes will help.”