Now he is called Hank, or the King, or King Henrik, or HEN-Reek, as go the rhythmic chants at the Garden. But growing up, he was so inseparable from his brother that he was Joelandhenrik. When Joel was 2, he had a severe coughing fit that necessitated a two-day hospital stay. Henrik was inconsolable, refusing to eat, Gabriella said.

“We were almost like the same person,” Joel said.

Both dabbled in tennis. Both starred in soccer, Joel as a forward and Henrik as a goalkeeper, same as in hockey. And both hated to lose. Family board games ended in tears or fights, if they ended at all. Once, Joel said, when the twins were 5, they lost in either soccer or street hockey (Joel couldn’t remember), and they reacted by running into the woods and hiding. Lundqvist’s competitive streak is so intense, his former teammate Brendan Shanahan said, “most psychiatrists would say he’s not healthy.” Imagine how Lundqvist felt his first two times playing goal in an organized hockey game. His team, Jarpens IF, lost, 12-2 and 18-0.

At the first practice with Jarpens IF, players were asked who wanted to play goal. Joel grabbed Henrik’s hand and raised it. At first, Lundqvist was drawn to the position by the armor: gloves, a mask and a set of heavy brown pads that he thought were pretty cool. It soon became an obsession. In sewing class, he knitted a pillow shaped like a goalie. He built a goal with pieces of old wood. He watched videos of his favorite Swedish goalie, Peter Lindmark, and two paragons of N.H.L. excellence, Patrick Roy and Dominik Hasek, incorporating elements of Roy’s butterfly and Hasek’s unorthodox style.

Image Credit... The New York Times

Only later — after the family settled in Bastad in southern Sweden, and after the boys moved, at 16, to Gothenburg so they could play for junior-level squads of the Swedish Elite League team Vastra Frolunda — did Gabriella, older by three and a half years, come to realize why goaltending so appealed to Henrik.

“He was very good at just worrying about himself, and I don’t mean that in a selfish way,” Gabriella said. “All his focus is in the right place, not worrying about things you can’t control.”

For someone so attached to his brother, Lundqvist embraced the solitude of the position. He loved practicing breakaways. He enjoyed the pressure. He welcomed being the last bastion of defense, just him and the net. Changing lines was for defensemen and forwards, like Joel, who went on to play for three years in the N.H.L.