Originally, the Swedish hockey players were supposed to scatter, each to his own destination, after the Olympics in Turin, Italy, but when the team won the gold medal on Sunday, the travel plans changed.
"We were told to get us to Stockholm, no matter what," Henrik Lundqvist was saying with a smile. "It was a great day. We arrived Monday afternoon, had a bus into the city, all the people were there, we had a nice dinner and a nice party after that."
But as Lundqvist, the 23-year-old Swedish goaltender, put his luggage through a metal detector on arrival at the Stockholm airport, a customs inspector said: "What do you have in that bag? It looks like metal."
In the bag, of course, was an Olympic gold medal, which the customs inspector already knew. Lundqvist wore the medal on a red ribbon Tuesday night, when he did television interviews and posed for photos before the Rangers' Cheering for Children charity party at Madison Square Garden after arriving from Stockholm.
"At customs here," he said, alluding to Kennedy Airport, "nothing happened."
But now, as he sat with reporters at a nearby table, he took off the medal.
"My neck was red yesterday from wearing it," he said. "It's pretty heavy."
Not as heavy as Lundqvist's responsibility as an Olympic goaltender, and not as heavy as the expectations for him now as the Rangers resume their quest for the Stanley Cup playoffs after the embarrassment of not having qualified in seven consecutive seasons. At 35-15-8, the Rangers are fifth overall in the NHL and lead the Atlantic Division. Not that Lundqvist seems concerned about those expectations.
"It's been a great year so far," he said. "I hope for an even better spring. I'm excited to be here. I love to play the game over here."
With a lock of his black hair occasionally slipping over his eyes, Lundqvist appeared as cool as a goaltender must be when the puck and all those skaters and sticks are flying around him in a big game, as cool as he appeared in Sweden's tense 3-2 victory over Finland in the gold-medal game.
"I'm so relaxed now," he said, "but I feel very excited to be back in New York with the Rangers."
His 5-1 won-lost record and 2.33 goals against average in the Olympics were not aberrations. With a 17-3-3 record for the Rangers, he leads all NHL goalies with a .927 save average and is tied for second with a 2.09 goals against average. Since NHL players became eligible for the Olympics in 1998, the only other gold-medal goaltenders were two of the best: Martin Brodeur with Canada in 2002 and Dominik Hasek with the Czech Republic in 1998.
"He nailed the big one," Rangers coach Tom Renney said. "The question was, can he rise to the big game? And he did."
For Henrik Lundqvist, known as Hank to his teammates, the big games have only begun. As big as the Olympics were, the Stanley Cup, at least in the context of the NHL is bigger. But he and the Rangers know that if he rose to the occasion in the Olympics, he's capable of rising to it in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
"We believe," Renney said, "we've got goaltending that can seal the deal."
Not since Mike Richter was at his best more than a decade ago, notably in the Rangers' 1994 Cup victory that ended a 54-year famine, has the team had this good a goaltender. And there's a 1994 omen involved. Four months before Mark Messier, Brian Leetch and Richter led the Rangers to that Cup celebration, Sweden's hockey team won the Olympic gold medal.
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