LOS ANGELES — Like clockwork, Kari Lehtonen removed his mask and placed it on the ice between the hashmarks.
As the anthem singer began belting out the words of the Star-Spangled Banner, Lehtonen went through his routine.
At the twilight’s last gleaming…
Lehtonen took a stride to his right, then cut back, and took a stride to his left before re-centering between the hashmarks.
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
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A couple shuffles, first to the left and then to the right.
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave…
Some more motion from Lehtonen, this time backward pivoting, as a smattering of Dallas fans in the Staples Center belted out, “STARS!” between the words ‘the’ and ‘spangled.’
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
A couple of stick taps for the anthem singer and Lehtonen retrieved his helmet, ready for the game.
It was the 422nd – and in all likelihood, final – time Lehtonen would go through that routine as the Dallas Stars’ goalie.
Nine years of memories in Dallas compressed into one final 60-minute showing for the 34-year-old Finn. Sure, it’s not the finale he had hoped for. Like everyone, Lehtonen wanted to prepare for a playoff series next week, but he made the most of it and did his job in a 4-2 win against the Kings.
Lehtonen made 34 saves, 26 combined in the second and third period, and he celebrated his 216th, and (likely) final win as a member of the Stars.
There were extended embraces on the ice afterwords. Teammates understanding the moment gave their goalie one last hug or tap on the head before Lehtonen skated off the ice one final time as a Star.
The Stars have made bigger trades in their history.
Getting Sergei Zubov for Kevin Hatcher on June 22, 1996, was grand larceny and truly ushered the Stars into a Stanley Cup era. Making a blockbuster trade for Tyler Seguin on July 4, 2013, won’t be forgotten soon, especially if Dallas can lock him up to a long-term extension this summer.
But after you take a glance at the big fireworks and blockbusters, trading for Kari Lehtonen on Feb. 9, 2010, is one of the best trade acquisitions in Stars history.
The Stars were ready to move on from a 34-year old Marty Turco after the 2009-10 season but lacked an heir apparent in the crease before trading Ivan Vishnevskiy and a fourth-round pick to the Atlanta Thrashers for a 26-year-old goalie that needed a fresh start.
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“Just getting the phone call from the Atlanta GM, and saying this is what has happened,” Lehtonen told The Athletic. “I think it was more of an excitement. Things had been kind of spinning at the same spot in Atlanta, things were not picking up, I was excited for change.”
The second overall pick in the 2002 draft, Lehtonen had his peaks and valleys in Atlanta.
As a 23-year-old he helped the franchise to its first and only trip to the playoffs, starting a career-high 68 games that he would later match during the 2010-11 season in Dallas. But he also struggled with his fitness and his weight, he ate too much fast food, and hurt his back and had off-season surgery in 2009.
“That was my path,” Lehtonen said. “Not that if I could have done it differently I would have done anything differently. Of course, I would still do it the same, I needed to learn. That’s who we are as people. But that’s a part of growing as a person and as a hockey player, so that shaped my life and it’s good.”
Then-Stars general manager Joe Nieuwendyk saw an opportunity with Lehtonen. He saw a goalie that looked like an all-world talent when healthy and one that if handled properly could deliver on his promise as a second-overall pick.
So when Lehtonen was cleared to play again, returning to the ice for an AHL conditioning stint in late January of 2010, the Stars started to focus on trading for the Finnish goalie. Three weeks later a deal was completed and Lehtonen made his Dallas debut on March 4, 2010, against the St. Louis Blues.
“He was a pretty quiet guy,” Jamie Benn told The Athletic. “He came in here and was like a typical Finn. They come in here and get there job done and on they go. Goalies are kind of in their own world really, but he was a great teammate from the start.”
The Stars were at a bit of a crossroads that season.
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Benn was a rookie and was being groomed as the future face of the franchise with Mike Modano playing his final campaign in Dallas. Lehtonen shared a crease with Turco for two months, one franchise goalie on his way out, another recently brought in to take his place.
“It was an interesting situation and I did not know how Marty would deal with the situation, it was hard for him, I’m sure,” Lehtonen said. “But he tried to help me out and I was like, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool.'”
During that stretch, Lehtonen played 12 games and won six of them. He was the back-up in the iconic final home game for Modano, Turco, and Jere Lehtinen and then backstopped a victory in the season finale, helping Modano go out a winner when Benn scored the game-winner in a shootout.
The following season Lehtonen was given the full-time starting role, kicking off an era where he shared a locker room with a dozen different goalies in an eight-year span.
“We’ve had a lot of goalies roll through here in my time, so it’s been nice to play alongside him,” Benn said. “I’ve got to know him pretty well and nine years with a guy on the same team, you get to know him really. He’s a great teammate, character guy, and it’s been fun.”
Lehtonen said he really felt comfortable in Dallas roughly a year after the trade.
“It took time, it’s always weird when things change that much, you start from zero to building a relationship with all the players,” Lehtonen said. “I think what probably made it a little bit easier was Atlanta got moved to Winnipeg, and that there wasn’t that old team anymore. I got to play against them once and it was fun, but that helped (that they moved). I never had to go there.”
So Lehtonen became a fixture in Dallas. He ranks second all-time in games played, wins, and minutes played. His 11,455 saves are a franchise record (Turco had 11,420) and his career save percentage of .912 is still tops amongst Stars goalies.
With those peaks came valleys, but you can’t look at Stars history in the 2000s without remembering Kari Lehtonen.
No one knows what’s going to happen next for Lehtonen.
He’s going to be an unrestricted free agent on July 1 and for the first time his career there is real uncertainty about the next step.
Lehtonen would like to stay in Dallas, and that looked like an option earlier this season. He was comfortable in a backup role, coming through in key moments in his first 22 games with a .919 save percentage.
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But things changed after Ben Bishop’s injury, Lehtonen was thrust back into a de facto starting role and that coincided with one of the worst collapses in NHL history. In his final 16 games, Lehtonen went 4-8-2 and posted a .901 save percentage.
“It is is a team game, and we haven’t really helped him out,” Stars goalie coach Jeff Reese told The Athletic. “We haven’t scored goals when we should, we haven’t finished off games when we had a chance. In his defense, he’s played some really good games. I remember when Ben went down, he went into Nashville and stood on his head and we didn’t score. We go into Pittsburgh and he does it again. So it works both ways, and good teams find ways to help each other and win. Would there be a few he would like back? For sure, but every goalie in the league is like that.”
Yes, every goalie has goals they want back. But Lehtonen has had some high-profile memorable moments he’d like to have back in high-pressure situations that have somewhat defined his reputation.
Heading into the final game of the 2010-11 season the Stars had a chance to reach the postseason with a win on the final day of the regular season. It was like a playoff game, but a playoff game where the opponent is badly battered by injuries and fielding what looked like an AHL lineup.
Lehtonen let up four goals on 22 shots in a 5-3 loss and the Stars missed the playoffs.
In 2014, Lehtonen made his playoff debut for the Stars and helped lead them to the postseason. No goalie was busier that season as Lehtonen played an NHL-high 3,804 minutes and had a .919 save percentage. For the only time in his career, he received votes for the Vezina Trophy from NHL general managers.
But in a six-game playoff series against the Anaheim Ducks, he allowed 19 goals on 165 shots, a .885 save percentage, and melted down in the third period of Game 6 as Dallas watched a 4-2 third-period lead turn into a 5-4 overtime loss.
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In 2016 he was part of a two-man playoff collapse with Antti Niemi when he started Game 7 against the St. Louis Blues and allowed three goals on eight shots in a 6-1 loss.
Those memories had been suppressed for much of the season. Lehtonen was the backup goalie, albeit with an expensive cap hit, but he looked good in that role and the Bishop-Lehtonen tandem worked.
But then the team struggled after Bishop’s injury.
Right or wrong, people inside and outside the organization blame the collapse on Bishop going down. And bad-angle goals or back-breakers in the third period became extremely magnified to the point where the Stars could only come to one conclusion — Lehtonen won’t be back next season, we can’t have another collapse with him in net.
So Lehtonen now launches into the vast unknown of uncertainty. He’ll be 35 next season, he’s never won a playoff series as a full-time starting goalie, and nobody knows what type of team will take a chance on him.
“It’s definitely going to be a little different kind of start the summer than before. Always had ‘this is where I’m gonna be,’ and now this is a little bit different,” Lehtonen said. “Same time I know that no matter what happens I’ll be fine and my family is fine, it is life. It doesn’t scare me or anything like that.”
Lehtonen plans to sit down with Niemi for both perspective and guidance.
Niemi went through a similar situation last summer. After two seasons in Dallas, the final year of his contract was bought out and he was a true free agent for the first time in his career.
Niemi ended up embarking on one of the oddest seasons in recent memory after signing a bargain bin deal with the Pittsburgh Penguins. He was waived this season, by both Pittsburgh and the Florida Panthers, before finding a home with the Montreal Canadiens and rescuing what looked like a dead career, posting a .929 save percentage in 19 games.
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“He’s not a big talker on the cell phone and stuff, it’s face-to-face (where) you get lots out from him,” Lehtonen said. “I will have lots of questions to him for when he comes back, I guess next week. We’ll get together for sure, I’m really interested to pick his brain and see how he did (it). What he did in Montreal is amazing.”
Lehtonen obviously doesn’t have any interest in playing for three different teams in one season, but he said Niemi’s perspective on the whole debacle-turned-resurrection and how he approached free agency will be valuable. Lehtonen was quick to add that those conversations have been put on hold until after the season.
“We text some time, but it’s not the same as talking,” Lehtonen said. “Two goalies, you can guess how quiet those texts would be.”
No matter what happens, Dallas will remain home for the Lehtonen family.
Lehtonen said that once his playing career is over, he and his wife will retire in Texas. It’s something he hadn’t thought about much before, but as his career progressed it just became a fact of life.
“It took time, but I think we just knew this would be where we’d stay,” Lehtonen said. “I’m sure it helps that we had three kids (in Dallas). It’s a lot of roots and things like. Something like that makes it (a) faster (connection). It makes you more comfortable in a city and it becomes home.”
When Lehtonen moved to Dallas he and his future wife, Abbe, were engaged with a couple of dogs. Now they have a 5-year-old son named Mikko, an 18-month-old daughter named Mia, and a 6-month old boy named Remi who was born back in November.
“I’m sure my oldest one he has lots of great memories,” Lehtonen said. “But I think (about) what I have gotten from it. Skating with him during the off days or after practices, that makes your week always. It’s been really special and just really happy that he’s been able to see what daddy does.”
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Father and son were able to make another memory in Los Angeles on Saturday. As the locker room was getting cleaned out and the equipment staff started to prep for travel to the airport, Kari and Mikko walked around the bowels of the Staples Center hand-in-hand.
They took a stop in the locker room, which was all but cleaned out, and then continued on their journey; Kari wearing a Dallas Stars sweatshirt and Mikko wearing a child-sized Stars home jersey with Lehtonen on the back.