Henrik Lundqvist pulled from the 2nd straight game... against the Arizona Coyotes.

It has been an ugly stretch for veteran goaltender Henrik Lundqvist and this most recent performance will only serve as more evidence for those who felt he was unjustly given an All Star nomination to point to. 

Lundqvist entered Sunday's game against the Arizona Coyotes on several days rest after he was pulled from his previous game against the Penguins after allowing a whopping 6 goals in that contest. The extra rest was likely a result of that awful performance so the expectation here for Lundqvist was obviously that he would have a bounce back game, but unfortunately it turned out to be anything but that.

Lundqvist would not even make it through the first 2 periods of play on Sunday surrendering a whopping 5 goals to what all in all is a fairly bad team in the form of the Coyotes. You could be forgiven for thinking that his 6 goals allowed against a high powered Penguins offense loaded with names like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel was less ugly than this 5 goal performance, but I actually think the reverse is true in this particular case. 

Lundqvist was abysmal against the Penguins and although you have to say that he did not perform up to expectations once again on Sunday it was obviously the case that his team left him out to dry on more than one of the Coyotes goals. Not only did the Rangers make a number of costly mistakes that would eventually lead to goals from the Yotes but they provided absolutely no offense of their own through 2 periods of play in order to alleviate some of the pressure off their star goaltender. 

Unfortunately for Lundqvist he also had some bad puck luck in this game as well. The Coyotes 3rd goal of the game came off the back of what appeared to be initially intended as a pass across the ice, a pass that instead deflected off a stick and completely changed directions, leaving Lundqvist with no time at all to react on the play. Of course there simply comes a time when you have to make a save for your team regardless of the circumstances and Lundqvist's inability to do so is likely why he was given the yank.

[pub]