Pekka Rinne Autograph Card

They said Pekka Rinne was over the hill, and that the Chicago Blackhawks would beat the Nashville Predators easily in the first round of the 2017 NHL playoffs (God I hate agreeing with Arpon Basu, the only NHL.com who picked the Preds to win the series; read my full predictions here).

And yet, off a 29-save Rinne shutout, the Preds took Game 1 at Chicago's United Center to take the lead and steal home-ice advantage from the Hawks.

Rinne's had a decent season, finishing with a 31-19-9 record with 3 shutouts (against the Anaheim Ducks, Edmonton Oilers, and Minnesota Wild, all potential playoff adversaries), a .918 save percentage and 2.42 goals-against average. The latter may seem a tad high in today's NHL, but keep in mind that Nashville spent a month and a half finding its game after the Shea Weber/P.K. Subban trade, and just when they'd found their rhythm, Subban injured his back for a month, case the team to go on a bit of a losing streak.

They could definitely surprise a few people here. I'd love it if they made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Final and faced their former coach Barry Trotz and his Washington Capitals...

As I mentioned in my prediction, however, that will require Rinne to play like the perennial Vezina runner-up that he used to be at least a dozen times, but I think he can do it. Here he is wearing the Preds' current white (away) uniform, on card #US-PR from Upper Deck's 2011-12 Ultimate Collection set and Ultimate Signatures sub-set:

It features an on-card autograph, signed it blue sharpie.

Pekka Rinne Jersey Card

There's a lot of talk about goaltending in the current NHL playoffs, some narratives truer than others. Henrik Lundqvist has played well enough to warrant still being The King (and the best goalie in the world), but Braden Holtby has been up to the challenge in facing him after not being quite as good as Jaroslav Halak in the first round.

Carey Price has been outplayed by both Craig Anderson and Ben Bishop so far, and his save percentage for the second round just barely made it back above the .900 mark after Game 5, so Playoff Price is back, but there's no question he was on the ball in the regular season with Vezina and Hart nods, and sharing the Jennings.

In the West, Frederik Andersen has put any doubts about his lack of experience to rest for the Anaheim Ducks, as have Karri Ramo (Calgary Flames), Eddie Lack (Vancouver Canucks), and Scott Darling (Chicago Blackhawks), while Devan Dubnyk, like Price, may have been shown the postseason is a while different animal, as can be seconded by Corey Crawford, who while spectacular at times and arguably one of his team's MVPs with Duncan Keith and Patrick Kane when he was on, was replaced by Darling as the starter in at least a couple of games.

Which brings me to the Nashville Predators' Pekka Rinne, who had okay numbers against the Hawks in the opening round, going 2-4 with a 2.68 GAA and .909 save percentage (as well as an assist) against the powerhouse team from Chicago, but he really finished his (also-Vezina-nominated) season with a bang by accepting Team Finland's invitation to play overseas.

Taking inspiration from his incredible performance at last year's edition (where he posted a 170-minute shutout streak, nearly three games long), he actually did better this year, posting an IIHF World Championships record 237-minute shutout streak, including three full shutouts (versus Denmark, Norway and Slovenia), then finally letting a goal in against Belarus.

With performances like these, he's really making King Henrik's stay at the top of the goalie food chain one in which he can't get too comfortable or complacent in - and that's all the better for us hockey fans.

And so I close the run of cards I started last summer with this one showing him with the Preds' former blue (home) uniform, making a spectacular glove save, featuring a white game-worn jersey swatch, from Panini's 2010-11 All Goalies set (card #8 of the Stopper Sweaters sub-set):

These inserts came at one per boxed set, which contained the entire 100-card collection as well; these sets cost $10-15 apiece on Ebay nowadays, but multipacks are available, such as 4 boxes for $30 or 20-box cases for $120-150.

Pekka Rinne Autographed Card

I had mentioned earlier this summer that I had a few Pekka Rinne cards to showcase. With the start he's having, I figured today's a good one to continue with it. So far, he has helped the Nashville Predators to a 6-2-2 record - their team points-gathering percentage is 5th-best in the NHL with an astonishing .700:

Rinne himself is 6-2-0, with a .927 save percentage and 1.97 GAA - and that's after last night's 4-3 loss to the Calgary Flames. That comes on the heels of his MVP-winning 2014 World Championships last Spring (earning a silver medal with Team Finland in the process), so it's not out of left field. And he is still the same goalie who is a perennial Vezina nominee, with roughly the same save percentage come playoff time (.916) as in the regular season (.918)

I had touched upon my first time meeting him (in 2010-11) last July; here's the card I got signed the second time, last year:

It's from Upper Deck's 2009-10 O-Pee-Chee collection (card #383 in the set), back when they had a retro look and the colour scheme still somewhat matched the team depicted on the card; it shows Rinne wearing the Preds' dark blue (home) Reebok uniform, with yellow unwarranted piping and colour patches under the arms - really not a great look. It was signed using someone else's skinny blue sharpie and has his jersey number (35), which is something he didn't do 5 years ago.

Pekka Rinne Autographed Card

There were too many abnormal things happening in NHL news this summer, and the fact that the Nashville Predators and their former head coach Barry Trotz were talked about almost daily certainly fits in that category.

No offense, but this is a team that made the playoffs 7 times and won a grand total of 2 series. They have won 19 total post-season games in their 15-year history (it takes 16 in the same season to win a Stanley Cup).

They only have one player who won an NHL trophy while on their team: Steve Sullivan, winning the Bill Masterton for his awesome comeback from injury in 2008-09; and Mike Fisher (one of my favourite players) won the NHL Foundation Award for his contributions to charity in 2011-12. In fairness, Shea Weber deserves to have won a Norris at this point, and Pekka Rinne does deserve one of Martin Brodeur's four unwarranted Vezinas.

Which brings me to the superstar Finnish goalie who seems to have my home team's number. I first encountered him during the 2010-11 season, after a game where he shut out the Montréal Canadiens at the Bell Centre, at which time he signed this 2007-08 Between The Pipes card for me in blue sharpie (#42 in the set, part of the Future Stars sub-set) by In The Game:

It shows him wearing the Preds' AHL farm club Milwaukee Admirals' light blue (away) uniform, which is pretty awful. Notice the MLB's Milwaukee Brewers' logo / patch: the hockey team was purchased by a group that includes the Brewers' minority owner (Mark Attanasio), its assistant GM (Gord Ash) and former pitcher Ben Sheets; they made the Brewers the sole sponsor of the hockey team. Once in a while, the Admirals host a ''Brewers Night'', where they wear uniforms inspired by or referring to the baseball team's history.

Ironically, in baseball, Nashville and Milwaukee have the same affiliation, just reversed, where the country music capital is the Brewers' AAA affiliate.

I'm convinced Rinne will regain his Vezina form this coming season and make everyone forget his injury-plagued 2013-14 campaign. It's Tuukka Rask's throne to lose, though, and I don't see him giving it up easily. But Rinne is coming off a 2014 World Championships where he was named the tournament MVP as he led Team Finland to the silver medal...

Pekka Rinne Swatch Card

Today seems like the perfect day to feature the first of a handful of Pekka Rinne cards I'll showcase throughout the summer, if only because earlier today (or tomorrow depending in which time zone you are!) Team Switzerland took their World Championship game against Team Finland into a 2-2 tie-breaker (which Finland eventually won in a shootout), breaking Rinne's 170-minute shutout streak in the third period - that's right, he went nearly three games without allowing a single goal.

So far in the tournament, Rinne has 2 shutouts, a 1.23 GAA and a .944 save percentage. Not bad for a goalie who only played 26 games this year (two of them with the Milwaukee Admirals) because of a serious injury and whom some experts are saying is ''on the decline''... Personally, I'm of the opinion that you don't take someone off their pedestal just because another one seems like he is on the rise; you wait until the established, stable performers are no longer able to sustain the pace and play themselves out of contention - like Martin Brodeur, who hasn't been the same since at least 2010.

Rinne is a two-time Vezina finalist - considered to have had one of the three best season-long performances twice - and a Second Team All-Star. He finished in the top-5 for goals-against average twice, and his regular-season statistics (2.39 GAA and .918 save percentage) are almost identical to his playoff stats (2.41, .916), so he cannot be considered to cave under pressure or when playing against better opposition (the playoffs feature the 16 best teams, out of 30, of the regular season).

At 6'5'' and 210 pounds, it has made sense so far for him to play a butterfly style, falling to his knees and covering the lower portion of the net with the pads, with a long reach to poke check. He and Henrik Lundqvist (two of the five best goalies in the world, sure) are mostly responsible for the current trend of goaltenders holding their catching glove almost straight up to try to cover the top corner, a style I don't stop the kids I teach (at the pee-wee or bantam levels) from using, but one I don't believe in, in the long run, because it takes the emphasis out of keeping one's reflexes sharp, and is more vulnerable to shots fired in the middle of the net (two to three feet from the ground) while only covering the oft-missed four-foot-high shot (assuming the goalie is in position, if not, he's just covering empty space); it's also less of a natural move - and therefore less efficient - to bring one's arms down quickly than to lift it up. ''Whatever works for you'', though, is what I ultimately say and work around.

Today's card also serves as a bit of a eulogy, as I learned this week that Panini has lost its license to produce NHL cards - Upper Deck has again negotiated a backdoor deal giving them exclusivity - and I will thus lose some of my favourite sets, chief among them Score.

But this card of the Nashville Predators super-stopper is from Panini's 2011-12 Limited (card #12, the Banner Season sub-set, numbered 35/99) and shows him wearing the team's dark blue (then-home, much better than the current yellow one despite the piping) uniform:

It provides a nice view of his usual stance.