Nashville Predators goalie Pekka Rinne, the once-unheralded man in the mask who became the face of a franchise, announced his retirement from hockey Tuesday after 15 years in the NHL, all spent with Nashville.
Rinne leaves as the team’s all-time leader in wins and shutouts. He won the Vezina Trophy as the league’s best goaltender in 2018 after being a finalist for the award in 2011, 2012 and 2015. He played in four All-Star Games and backstopped the team during the 2017 Stanley Cup Finals run. This season he won the King Clancy Memorial Trophy, given annually to the NHL player “who best exemplifies leadership qualities on and off the ice and who has made a significant humanitarian contribution in his community.”
And he once scored a goal against Chicago.
Rinne’s last game was a memorable one: a shutout against Carolina played in front of a fairly robust crowd at Bridgestone Arena in the regular season’s final game. A very handsome and smart man wrote:
The math will say it was him who stopped 30 shots, putting up his 60th career shutout in a 5-0 win over Carolina, playing behind a ragtag group of teammates as coach John Hynes opted to rest many of the team's best players. (Of course, this season, "ragtag" has been de rigueur for the Preds.) But it wasn't just Rinne. Every shot the ’Canes sent goalward, every chance, every bouncing puck, every slapshot that seemed destined for the net, every skidder that looked like it might sneak behind him, Rinne had 12,000-plus people with him, willing him to make a save, screaming as if the combined sonic force of the crowd might put just enough english on the puck to send it to safety.
In a piece for The Players’ Tribune, Rinne, as is his way, thanked nearly every person connected to the team past and present as well as every person in Nashville and assured the fans who have cheered him for 15 years that the crease that’s been his for so long is in good hands with Juuse Saros. Rinne writes:
I also realized the end was near when [Saros] told me he had posters of me on his wall back in Finland, and that he watched me a lot on YouTube. (Tip for other athletes: When the guy trying to take your spot says that to you, it might be time to retire). Seriously though, most people know it now — Juuse is the real deal. I knew it right when I met him.
At his press conference, Rinne said when he was drafted in 2004 (in the eighth round, which doesn’t exist anymore), he had to pull out his dad’s atlas to find Nashville. So woven into the city’s fabric has he become, he said his only choices after this season were to either retire or continue playing in Nashville, that he didn’t want to end his career anywhere else.
“I’ll always be a Nashville Predator.”
Just the way it should be.
