TORONTO — Henrik Lundqvist knew the call — if it was indeed coming — would light up his phone in the early evening.

The former New York Rangers goalie was home in Sweden. The Hockey Hall of Fame’s selection committee was busy in Toronto paring down its 2023 list.
Lundqvist eventually saw a number he didn’t recognize.

The only problem? It read “Spain.”

“It just didn’t make sense with the caller ID,” Lundqvist recalled thinking back in June.

Still, he decided to answer. Hall of Fame chairman Lanny McDonald was on the other end.

The 2012 Vezina Trophy winner as the NHL’s top netminder headlines the class inducted Monday night.

“Very humbling,” Lundqvist said Friday at the ring ceremony. “A great feeling when you’re walking away from the game.”

He was joined by Mike Vernon, Tom Barrasso, Pierre Turgeon and Caroline Ouellette as part of a goalie-heavy player category. Former NHL coach Ken Hitchcock and the late Pierre Lacroix, who was both an agent and executive, went in as builders.

A star netminder in the league for 15 seasons, Lundqvist was selected in his first year of eligibility. He’s sixth in NHL history in wins (459), ninth in games (887) and 17th in shutouts (64).

Those 459 victories are the most by a European goalie. The first Swedish goaltender to be inducted, Lundqvist won 61 more times in the playoffs before his career ended in 2020 because of a heart condition.

Selected in the seventh round by New York at the 2000 NHL draft, he backstopped the Rangers to the 2014 Stanley Cup final. He won Olympic gold with Sweden in 2006.

“This is kind of the last hurrah,” Lundqvist said. “Extremely proud and grateful.”

Vernon won the Cup with his hometown Calgary Flames in 1989 and the Detroit Red Wings in 1997 — adding the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP with that second title.

Barrasso won both the Calder Trophy as NHL rookie of the year and the Vezina during a magical 1983-84 season with the Buffalo Sabres out of high school as a phenom from the Boston area. He won titles with Pittsburgh in 1991 and 1992.

Turgeon had 515 goals and 812 assists in 19 NHL seasons. The former New York Islanders star was the captain of the Montreal Canadiens in the team’s final season at the Montreal Forum.

Hitchcock, fourth on the NHL victories list with 849, won the Cup with the Dallas Stars in 1999 in a 22-season career behind NHL benches.

Lacroix, who died in December 2020 at age 72, was an agent before being named general manager of the Quebec Nordiques in 1994. He moved with the franchise when it relocated to Colorado.

Ouellette won four Olympic gold medals with Canada’s women’s team.

GOLDEN KNIGHTS: President Joe Biden joked about ignoring his sagging poll numbers in Nevada and thanked the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights for their role in helping the city recover from the 2017 mass shooting when he honored them Monday at a White House ceremony for winning the Stanley Cup.

Taking a brief respite from world events, Biden marveled at a hockey team that plays in the desert celebrating a championship and shined a spotlight not only on the Golden Knights’ on-ice accomplishments but the organization’s work in the community, most notably in the aftermath of the Oct. 1, 2017, shooting on the Las Vegas Strip.

“Showing up for victims’ families, survivors, first responders — in fact, your championship ring honors them,” Biden said. “The diamonds on your rings form a star: the same star on the banner that you raised that honored 58 people who were lost on that day. You guys are something else.”

Players said politics never came up in their private meeting with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, adding most of the conversation was about how they won the franchise’s first title. This visit was the first by an NHL team since the Tampa Bay Lightning in April 2022, when they celebrated their back-to-back titles won during the pandemic in 2020 and ’21.

The 2022 champion Colorado Avalanche were unable to visit last season because of scheduling conflicts.

“We hope to be able to do it again,” Vegas Coach Bruce Cassidy said. “But you never know. May be a once in a lifetime.”

A couple of players have done this before: American defenseman Alec Martinez, who won the Cup with Los Angeles in 2012 and ’14, was honored by Barack Obama, and Canadian Alex Pietrangelo, who captained St. Louis to a title in 2019 and took part in a ceremony with Donald Trump.

Vegas has those players and a vast majority of its roster back from last season and with 12 wins in 15 games is off to one of the best starts for a reigning champion in league history. Cassidy thinks the continuity makes this season feel a bit like an extension of that success, and more winning added a brighter shine to the festivities.

“It makes days like today more enjoyable,” playoff leading scorer Jack Eichel said. “It’s been a good start to our season. Obviously want to continue doing that, but, yeah, it’s a celebration of what we accomplished last year and then we’re back to work.”

The Golden Knights actually practiced Monday, a rarity for teams following a White House visit. But the schedule set up that way given the cross-country travel preceding the start of a five-game trip that opens with a game against the Washington Capitals on Tuesday night.

It’s also back to work for Biden, who’s campaigning for reelection next year and quipped of Nevada having “the polling data I’m not paying much attention to.”

He also is dealing with the Israel-Hamas war and and is set to travel to San Francisco for a meeting later this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“Obviously, there’s a lot more important things on hand for him to do,” Martinez said. “So, to take a little bit of time out of their day to allow us to have this experience is pretty special.”

Team captain Mark Stone, who is Canadian, delivered remarks after Biden spoke, calling Las Vegas the entertainment capital of the world and contrasting it with the president’s home state of Delaware. He got emotional at times and shook off nerves that overwhelmed someone used to playing hockey in front of sellout crowds of 20,000.

“It was probably the most nervous I’ve ever been,” Stone said. “Speaking in Vegas (at the parade), I think I’d had a few drinks, so it was a little bit easier to do that one. But with the president standing a couple steps over, it was definitely pretty nerve-wracking.”