{"id":579371,"date":"2026-05-20T09:33:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T09:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/579371\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T09:33:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T09:33:38","slug":"shooting-down-a-best-rangers-goalie-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/579371\/","title":{"rendered":"Shooting Down A &#8220;Best Rangers Goalie&#8221; Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img alt=\"&amp;nbsp;Brad Penner-Imagn Images\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"640\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"standard-img\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2e20183a70f8e9bed50558bc670189cd.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0Brad Penner-Imagn Images<\/p>\n<p>The Maven always feels rewarded when young writers delve into Blueshirts history and present views. But sometimes the views go too far;\u00a0 as The Maven was shocked by one yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>Blue Line Station&#8217;s Justin Bonhard wrote a piece about the &#8220;Three Best Rangers Goalies Of All-time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Personally, I love lists like that because \u2013 most of the time \u2013 they inspire thought and often controversy.<\/p>\n<p>Well this one is just plain wrong. Wrong because his list omits a half-century of Rangers hockey from 1926 through the 1950&#8217;s, which includes a ton of outstanding goalkeeping.<\/p>\n<p>As for his &#8220;Best&#8221; selections, they are as follows: 3. Ed Giacomin; 2. Mike Richter; 1. Henrik Lundqvist.<\/p>\n<p>One by one I&#8217;ll tell you about the mistakes.<\/p>\n<p>3. GIACOMIN: I covered him from his first day as a Ranger goalie. Eddie was a fighting goalie with enormous spirit and the fans adored him as they should. However, when it came to playing goal Eddie was just a tad above average and I&#8217;d bet that he would admit that. As for his selection to the Hall of Fame, Giacomin put it well. &#8220;The fans were the ones who got me in!&#8221; Note: Eddie never got even close to a Stanley Cup.(Also benefitted from an excellent sidekick Gilles Villemure who, at times, was better than Eddie.)<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>1. LUNDQVIST: King Henrik, at best, belongs in third place on the Rangers best goalie list behind Davy Kerr (1940 Cup) and Charlie Rayner (1950, took them to Game 7 double OT Final) Hank never won a\u00a0 Cup and was out-goaled in that fateful Devils series by Marty Brodeur in the playoff when Adam Henrique scored the OT winner and torpedoed yet another Rangers Cup quest.<\/p>\n<p>2. MIKE RICHTER: I put the Cup champ in second place behind Kerr and put Lundqvist third.<\/p>\n<p>MAJOR FLAW: Author Justin Bonhard omitted a half-century of Rangers goalies from 1926 to Giacomin and that just isn&#8217;t fair. He certainly could have given a nod to the excellent Andy Aitkenhead who led New York to the second Cup in 1933!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0Brad Penner-Imagn Images The Maven always feels rewarded when young writers delve into Blueshirts history and present views.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5111],"tags":[1586,64618,33189,7020,5,64617,12232,3328,35,5190,5193,4,36,64616],"class_list":["post-579371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-rangers","tag-adam-henrique","tag-blue-line-station","tag-ed-giacomin","tag-henrik-lundqvist","tag-hockey","tag-justin-bonhard","tag-mike-richter","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-rangers","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkrangers","tag-nhl","tag-rangers","tag-rangers-goalies"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116606219528185146","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}