New York, NY (SportsNetwork.com) – New York Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist believes he will return to game action later this week after recovering from a vascular injury.<\/p>\n
Lundqvist practiced with his teammates on Tuesday for the first time in seven weeks. He hasn’t played since Feb. 2, two days after being hit in the throat by a shot in the second period of a game against the Carolina Hurricanes.<\/p>\n
“It’s been a long wait for me to get out there,” said Lundqvist on Tuesday. “I feel like I’m really close to where I need to be. I’m pretty close to being ready.”<\/p>\n
Lundqvist was cleared to return to practice last week and has been skating, but took part in a full workout with the team prior to Tuesday’s game against the Los Angeles Kings. He wasn’t in the lineup for Tuesday’s contest, but could play later this week.<\/p>\n
The Rangers visit Ottawa on Thursday, then travel to Boston on Saturday before returning home for a Sunday game against Washington.<\/p>\n
“I’m expecting to play this week, but when, I’m not sure,” Lundqvist added. “I’ve been waiting for so long now to come out and practice and I want to play. I miss the game so much.”<\/p>\n
Lundqvist actually remained in the game after taking the shot to the throat against the Hurricanes and played two days later in a 6-3 win over Florida, but didn’t dress the following night and has been out of action ever since.<\/p>\n
The Rangers, entering Tuesday’s game, have a record of 17-3-3 since Lundqvist went down and have moved to the top of the Metropolitan Division while also challenging for the best record in the NHL.<\/p>\n
Cam Talbot has started all but two games during Lundqvist’s absence, posting a record of 15-3-3 with a 2.12 goals-against average in 21 games.<\/p>\n
Lundqvist has a mark of a 25-11-3 with five shutouts and a 2.25 GAA in 39 games this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New York, NY (SportsNetwork.com) – New York Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist believes he will return to game action later this week after recovering from a vascular injury. Lundqvist practiced with his teammates on Tuesday for the first time in seven weeks. He hasn’t played since Feb. 2, two days after being hit in the throat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nhl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}