Pekka Rinne doesn’t have to be here but he is, standing in a hallway at Centennial Sportsplex, after practice, after interviews with reporters, after a team meeting, after a shower and before whatever sensible lunch he’s about to pick at, trying to help one lingering writer understand how he changed his game at age 35.
Also, why. At age 35, after the postseason of his career, which he started with two road shutouts of the Chicago Blackhawks and finished two games shy of the Stanley Cup … why change anything after that? The answer helps explain why he’s going to win the Vezina Trophy and why in two months he could stand alone among icons in Nashville’s short professional sports history. Why the nice guy might just finish first.
“I don’t know what was behind it, just to take my game to maybe another level,” Rinne says in this hallway outside the Predators’ Centennial locker room, three days before Thursday’s playoff opener for Cup favorite Nashville against Colorado at Bridgestone Arena. “The game is getting faster every year, and I wanted to make some adjustments. Itap hard to make any big ones. In my case itap more my posture and my stance. In the past I feel like I was more aggressive all the time. I still try to play a fairly aggressive game, an athletic game, but I’ve tried to quiet it down a bit. Early on in the season I noticed I wasn’t getting as tired after games, so I feel like itap been a more efficient way of playing. I think thatap a good term for it. Efficient.”
And then he tries to show the difference between then and now. Forced to cover more ground after giving up rebounds then. A bit more upright with feet closer together now. Lots of sweeping, acrobatic saves then. Some of the same saves, completed with less drama now.
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