Jonathan Quick going from breaking New Yorkers’ hearts to capturing them is only a footnote in what has been the greatest career for an American goaltender in NHL history.
A 34-save performance in the Rangers’ 4-2 win over the Golden Knights Sunday evening chiseled Quick onto a Netminder Mount Rushmore next to the 14 others who reached the coveted 400-win milestone. He was the first U.S.-born goalie to do so, as well as the third active player to achieve the feat.
“Everything,” K’Andre Miller said of what Quick has meant to the Rangers room. “I don’t want to talk about him not playing, but I think a good example is just when he isn’t playing, the energy he brings on the bench. Opening up the door for guys, I don’t know, putting up waters, just doing anything he can to be a part of the team and make sure the energy is up and we’re staying locked into games.”
Jonathan Quick of the Rangers is named first star of the game after getting his 400th career win against the Vegas Golden Knights at Madison Square Garden on February 2, 2025 in New York City.
There was significant doubt when Quick signed with the Rangers ahead of last season.
After a couple down years led to the end of his 16-year tenure with the Kings, Quick assumed a third-stringer assignment with the 2023 Stanley Cup winners, the Golden Knights, in what appeared to be the closing moments of his career.
Not only has Quick reinvigorated his career by morphing into a modern version of his vintage self, but he has embraced a role for a team, an organization and a fan base that once cursed him for denying them a Stanley Cup in 2014.
Quick has graced New York with the end of his storied career, as we witness one of the best to ever do it finish with a bang.
It has to be a trip for a kid from Connecticut who grew up rooting for the Rangers.
A three-time Stanley Cup winner and the winningest American-born goalie, there has never been an NHL goaltender who plays a style quite like Quick, whose trademark athleticism is as prevalent as ever despite turning 39 on Jan. 21.
“All Jon ever wanted to do was stop the puck,” Todd Hall, a former Wolf Pack player and Quick’s assistant coach at Hamden High School, told The Post over the phone earlier this month. “That’s all he wanted to do. That was his job and that’s what he wanted to do. I know fame and money changes people, but Jon was never into any of that.”
Jonathan Quick of the Rangers makes a save during the second period when the New York Rangers played the Vegas Golden Knights Sunday, February 2, 2025 at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, NY.
It is in talking to people who know him best, however, that reveals it is Quick’s winning attitude, as well as his fostering of team morale and camaraderie, that will make him one of the most memorable players in the game.
There haven’t been any discussions between the Rangers and Quick’s camp about a contract for next season, according to a source, or an indication if he plans to continue playing.
But it’s been a harmonious marriage between the two so far. The fit for Quick at this stage of his career has also been just right.
Hall was 28 and just one week removed from his professional hockey career when he ran into his old assistant coach, Bill Verneris, at Hamden High in Hamden, Connecticut. Verneries had just become the head coach and offered him a voluntary assistant position, which turned into a 20-year position for Hall.
Now 52, Hall recalls ripping shots at a 15-year-old Quick, most of which he scored, being a former pro shooting on a teenager.
“He would take the puck, give it back to me out of the net and say, ‘Shoot again,’ ” Hall said. “Grab it, shoot again. Grab it, shoot again. He didn’t get angry. He just kind of got refocused and said he doesn’t want to get scored on. He had that intent or that competitiveness, but focused competitiveness even at that age.
“I’ve learned a lot more about Jon as he went on. Not that he has an unorthodox style, but he doesn’t have the standard butterfly or the standard anything style. He has a style that he created to give him the best chance to stop the puck. Obviously, his athleticism speaks for itself. His left to right movement, all that stuff is just crazy. Even at 39 years old. It’s absurd, it really is, but not surprising.”
Quick beat out a senior goalie, who was very good according to Hall, for the starting job during his lone season at Hamden High.
He ended up transferring to Avon Old Farms, an all-boys boarding school, where he was named to the 2002 New Haven Register All-Area Ice Hockey Team.
Jonathan Quick of the Rangers makes a save during the second period when the New York Rangers played the Vegas Golden Knights Sunday, February 2, 2025 at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, NY.
For leading Avon Old Farms to two-straight New England Prep Championships, in his junior and senior seasons, Quick is still celebrated in the Connecticut hockey community. You can find his autographed No. 32 Kings jersey hanging in the Lou Astorino Ice Arena, where he brought the two Cups he won in LA for everyone to enjoy.
“My coach always used to say that still water runs deep, and he embodied that,” Hall said of Quick. “That quietness though, he was definitely focused on what he needed to do. Ultimately, that goal was always there.”
The Kings selected Quick with the 72nd pick in the 2005 draft, before he played a couple of seasons at UMass Amherst.
After starting the 2007-08 seasons with the Kings’ AHL affiliate, the Manchester Monarchs, Quick slept through an alarm and missed a meeting, which led to him getting demoted to play with the Reading Royals of the East Coast Hockey League. It was a wake-up call.
“We just kept talking about it, ‘Do you understand what this guy is doing down there?’ ” Michael Futa, who served as the co-director of amateur scouting, director of player personnel, VP of Hockey Operations and assistant general manager at different points through 13 years with the Kings, recalled to The Post over the phone on Monday. “Internally [we thought], we might have our No. 1 guy, but it might not be the guy that we expected to be. When he came up, he basically wouldn’t give up the net.”
Jonathan Bernier, the Kings’ 11th overall pick in 2006, was drafted the year after Quick and was supposed to be what Quick ultimately became. After he opened the 2008-09 season with the Monarchs, Quick was called up in December amid an injury to Erik Ersberg and away he went.
Those who have watched Quick develop talk about the way he revolutionized the position.
His LA teammates thought Quick got into the other team’s heads before they even took the ice. The way he bashed his stick to smithereens if he let in a late goal only indicated how much he cared.
Los Angeles Kings goalie Jonathan Quick (32) makes a save off Phoenix Coyotes left wing Taylor Pyatt (14)in the second period of game four of the Western Conference Finals of the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs at Staples Center in Los Angeles on May 20, 2012.
There was no such thing as an off switch for Quick’s competitiveness. Not even when all his teammates would come in at the end of warmups and try to put the puck in to finish up before the start of the game.
“I remember countless times sitting up top watching him and going, ‘These guys are going to get run over by the Zamboni before Quickie allows them to score,’ ” Futa quipped. “You’d just know, Quickie is on tonight.”
When Darryl Sutter took over as head coach of the Kings in the middle of the 2011-12 season, the veteran bench boss said he just let Quick go on a run. It was apparent right away to Sutter that Quick may as well have had a ‘C’ stitched on his jersey.
Quick wasn’t just standing in net, either. He was totally involved in the system part of the game, and would’ve done whatever it took or whatever was asked of him if it meant the team would win.
“The hardest thing to do was find a backup for Quickie because we’d say, ‘Darryl, how many times is Quickie going to start?’ And he’d just go, ‘82,’ ” Futa said.
Jonathan Quick of the Los Angeles Kings and head coach Darryl Sutter celebrate after the Kings 3-2 double overtime victory against the New York Rangers in Game Five of the 2014 Stanley Cup Final at Staples Center on June 13, 2014 in Los Angeles, California.
Sutter added in his own phone call with The Post: “The crease is his — that’s the bottom line. He’s old-styled in that way, where the crease is his. He wanted to play every game and he was ready. Played through injuries, everything. You look at the toll it took on him. He had a couple big surgeries after those Cups and he still came back and was a great goalie in the league.”
Quick led the Kings to two Stanley Cups in 2012 and 2014, winning the Conn Smythe the first time around before defeating the Rangers the second time around in five games that featured three overtime victories — including two in double OT.
The Kings went up 3-0 in all four rounds on the way to Quick outdueling legendary Devils goaltender Martin Brodeur for his first Cup. And, well, for the sake of the majority reading this piece, you all know what happened in 2014, when not even Rangers Hall of Fame netminder Henrik Lundqvist could outplay him.
San Jose actually went up 3-0 on LA in the first round in 2014, but after they took Game 4, Quick had his equivalent of Mark Messier’s 1994 guarantee. Quick said to the room, ‘We’re winning this series,’ per a source, and he blanked the Sharks in Game 5 before giving up just one goal in each of the final two contests.
Quick’s 46 playoff wins and 10 playoff shutouts are the most in Kings history, by considerable margins, along with a .921 save percentage and a 2.31 goals-against average.
“There’s no question that the jersey needs to go up, there needs to be a statue and you just hope that day comes,” Futa said of Quick’s legacy in LA. “I think it will. I know how much he loved being a King, and he’s the ultimate King, right?”
Quick has never been about the individual celebrations. In fact, it would be fair to say he wants no part of it.
Everything is always about the team and winning. It’s fitting since everybody describes his family, with his wife, Jackie, and two kids, Madison and Cash, as the definition of winners.
“I asked him, ‘What’s your communication like with Shesterkin?’ He says, ‘Well I just kind of tell him, for 60 games in a season you have to be the best goaltender in the world, and for the other 22 games I have to be the best goaltender in the world,’ ” Futa said. “It’s just the way he looks at it.
Jonathan Quick of the New York Rangers gets his 400th career win against the Vegas Golden Knights at Madison Square Garden on February 2, 2025.
He has been a crucial presence in the Rangers locker room, where Quick has served as a beacon of dedication while showing what it means to treat your teammates like family.
The 2023-24 team-voted Players’ Player award winner, however, has done just as much on the ice for the Rangers as he’s done off it. He’ll be celebrated for it whether he likes it or not.
New York should hold onto Quick for as long as it can.
Because the next stop? Yonge Street in Toronto for a Hockey Hall of Fame induction.
