30 Days of Lundqvist: First NHL Win
It’s September and it’s another step closer to the New York Rangers 2017-18 season. To gear up for the season, Kevin had an idea for us at Blueshirt Banter for the month of September: to celebrate the Rangers’ most important player, Henrik Lundqvist. All throughout this month, we’ll be writing about some of our favorite Lundqvist moments in a series, “30 Days of Lundqvist.”
To start things off, we have Lundqvist’s first career NHL win, and first in a Rangers’ sweater, that came during his rookie season in 2005-06. His NHL debut came one game earlier, on October 8, 2005 against the New Jersey Devils in place of injured starting goaltender Kevin Weekes.
The next game, again against the Devils and goaltender Martin Brodeur, Lundqvist backstopped the Rangers to a 4-1 victory at Madison Square Garden. Lundqvist saved 20 of 21 shots that translated to a 0.952 save percentage, and collected his first NHL win – the first of the 405 career wins he’s earned so far in his career.