Thursday night gave us some exciting action across the National Hockey League, including a big shutout down in Nashville. Today we will also look at how family helped one goaltender down his path and a popular fictional reporter is back.
Nobody Does it Better Than Pekka
The Nashville Predators benefitted from another great performance out to goaltender Pekka Rinne last night. The veteran made 26 saves to pick up his first shutout of the season in a 4-0 win over the Minnesota Wild.
“Happy with the shutout,” Rinne told reporters after the game. “It’s not an everyday thing, so it feels good. After the first period, I thought that we regrouped and played a really solid two periods of hockey. That was enough tonight, and we played well and did what we needed to do. I think we played better defensively. I thought that was a gutsy game.”
Rinne has enjoyed playing against the Wild in his career. Last night was his sixth career shutout against Minnesota. They only team he has shutout more in his career are the Arizona Coyotes, who he has blanked eight times.
The shutout was 56th of Rinne’s career. Nobody has more shutouts in the NHL than Rinne since his rookie season of 2008-09. Jonathan Quick is second during that span with 51 with Marc-Andre Fleury and Henrik Lundqvist tied for third with 46 shutouts.
Anderson’s Career Path Started by His Brother
Last week, NHL.com did a feature asking goaltenders from around the league on how or why they started playing the position. Ottawa Senators’ goaltender Craig Anderson had a very interesting answer that hits home.
Growing up, all Craig wanted to do was hang out and play with his older brother and his friends. Since he was four years younger and much smaller, the only way he was allowed to play with the older boys was to be willing to play goaltender. Anderson agreed because all he wanted to was be part of the game.
When he started playing organized hockey, he switched between playing goal and defense, but that routine quickly grew tiresome.
“I remember one game I was playing defense and I refused to go on the ice because I just wanted to play goalie,” he revealed during his interview. “We were down maybe 6-0 after the first period and my dad had the gear in the car and the coach came over after the period and said, ‘Hey, your son won’t play unless he plays goalie,’ and ever since that’s kind of the deal.”
The power move worked out well for Anderson as he is currently in his 17th NHL season. He has played in 619 career games with the Chicago Blackhawks, Florida Panthers, Colorado Avalanche and Senators.
Tuukka Chats with Lazlo
In November of 2017, Chance the Rapper showed that he is not just a one-trick pony by hosting Saturday Night Live. One of the sketches he took part in that night was playing Lazlo Holmes, a New York Knicks reporter having to substitute on a New York Rangers broadcast. Besides having some fun with hockey names like Brady Skjei, he came up with the phrase “Let’s do that hockey,” which has since become the subject of numerous memes.
Chance has brought the popular character back for the league and has been interviewing some of the game’s top stars over the past couple of weeks including Auston Matthews and P.K. Subban. His most recent interview was with Boston Bruins netminder Tuukka Rask.
One of the topics the duo tackled during the entertaining segment was why fans boo him during the games.
“I wondered the same thing for many, many years,” Rask said with a smile on his face. “I was making these saves and all I heard was ‘boo,’ so I thought they might not like me that much. Then my mom called me and said they’re yelling ‘Tuu,’ like my first name, so I guess they do like me.”
We are looking forward to who else will get some one-on-one with Lazlo this season!
