The cocky DiPietro is a superb puckhandler who sometimes needs to corral his creative impulses. Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

He will not play forever, of course, probably just 4 1/2 more years, until his contract expires when he's 40. Brodeur has played 70 or more games in each of 10 seasons; barring injuries or an unthinkable Devils collapse, he should end up 100 or so victories clear of Roy. "I have Marty ahead of Patrick right now," Edmonton Oilers general manager Kevin Lowe says. "The way he handles the puck really does make him like an extra defenseman. A lot of players thought some nights Patrick was beatable, but I don't think anyone has thought of Marty, over the last six or eight years, as beatable."

While not oblivious to the great New York goalie debate -- "Some fans'll come up and say 'Lundqvist's better than you,' " a smiling Brodeur said before making 31 saves in a 3-2 win over Florida on Jan. 2 -- the Montreal native treats it as he does almost everything else, with a Gallic shrug. Lundqvist might be the King, but Brodeur grasps that he is master of the goaltending universe. "He relishes the big game and big moment and wants it on his shoulders, but he's very relaxed about it," says Islanders captain Bill Guerin, who played 4 1/2 seasons with Brodeur in New Jersey. "Marty's like, 'Yeah, let's go win a game.' "

Despite a strong 2.17 goals-against average and a creditable .918 save percentage through Sunday, Brodeur hasn't won at all this season against DiPietro and Lundqvist. Since HAM2112's post on Islandermania, Brodeur has fallen to 0-5-2 against his wannabe rivals. (DiPietro is 3-1 against Lundqvist.) Brodeur generously lauds DiPietro for his flair and personality -- "I've had shutouts against them, and at the end of the game he's flipped the puck in my direction, which is cool," he says -- but his tone is distinctly frostier on the subject of Lundqvist. They crossed paths at the NHL awards ceremony last June, but Brodeur says Lundqvist never looked in his direction. Although he attributes that to a European temperament rather than old-time hockey nonfraternization between a Devil and a Ranger, Lundqvist's on-ice style is more problematic for the New Jersey goalie. "The way he plays the game is not something I like too much," says Brodeur, whose 96 career regular-season shutouts were seven short of Terry Sawchuk's record. "Lundqvist is weird."

If he looks weird, he is generally wonderful. Lundqvist has taken the Roy-style butterfly and spread its wings, pushing the technique to its logical extension. Extension is the key. The 6' 1" goalie has the widest stance in the NHL; indeed his splayed legs allow him almost no option but to go down. When Lundqvist does drop into a butterfly, his pads cover almost the full six feet of the bottom of the net. He also has been blessed with exceptional lateral speed, and even Brodeur acknowledges that Lundqvist, who plays uncommonly deep in his crease, knows when to come out and challenge shooters. Although Brodeur's and Lundqvist's physical approaches to the position are a world apart -- coming from Sweden and the wider international-sized rinks, Lundqvist is more of an east-west goalie -- Rangers goalie coach Benoît Allaire holds up Brodeur's mental resilience to his own goalie as a template. "I always talk about how Marty handles things, how he can have a bad game one day and a shutout the next," Allaire says. "I tell Henrik that sometimes you don't have to take two or three practices to get your game back."

Through Lundqvist's first 36 starts this season he allowed four or more goals just seven times, the Toronto debacle included. "We build off Hank because we feel we can at least attempt to go score because he's back there," Rangers coach Tom Renney says. "And what I like about Hank is his ability to handle the nuances of New York City. This is a big place with a lot going on, but he doesn't let all the peripheral things -- [in 2006, for example, Lundqvist was named as one of People magazine's 100 Most Beautiful] -- interfere with his being a professional."

Yet if there ever were an ideal marriage of goalie and environment, DiPietro and New York are it. When the Islanders called up the Winthrop, Mass., native at age 19 in 2001, his minor league goaltending partner, veteran Wendell Young, joked that DiPietro was going to need two seats on the plane, one for his body and another for his ego. His body has swelled -- with 200 pounds on his 6-foot frame, he's 15 pounds heavier than he was as a rookie -- and his cockiness has hardly shrunk. DiPietro is hyperaggressive and acrobatic, but his strengths sometimes can turn into liabilities, like when he charged Montreal's Steve Bégin on a breakaway last March and wound up sustaining a concussion for his trouble. "I know we've scored a couple of goals on him when he has played the puck," Buffalo Sabres center Derek Roy says. "Because he challenges so much, it opens up a lot of backdoor stuff if you fake him."

"Right now he's managing his game better than he did," Brodeur says of DiPietro. "The only question is [about] how emotional he is. When you're a goalie of that stature with that kind of contract, you become a leader. You're responsible for 19 other guys. You have to be composed, to feel you're in control at all times. I'm not sure that he is. He snaps. He breaks his stick. If you're not in control, how can you expect your team to be in control? When he's stable, and I think he will be within a year, things are going to go...." Brodeur extended his fingers, an airplane angling skyward.

And that, hockey fans, is when the Marty, Ricky or the King debate will really take off.