From inauspicious start, Pekka Rinne makes MVP case

More than a decade ago, then-Nashville Predators assistant general manager Ray Shero needed time to warm to the idea that it had been worth his time to look at a Finnish League backup goalie named Pekka Rinne.

Shero, who had been in Finland to see Nashville prospects, recalls it was -20 degrees Fahrenheit on that February day when he flew into Oulu, Finland, where Rinne played for Karpat.

"Oulu is so far north that you are getting close to the North Pole," Shero said. "The game started at seven, and we took a cab to the rink and discovered the arena didn't open its doors until six. It was so cold and there was nowhere to go."

He remembers joking to his Finnish scout, Janne Kekalainen, that "we are going to freeze to death out here if they don't open the door soon."

Once inside, Shero didn't find improved conditions. "It was so cold I had to go buy a hat and coffee," he recalled.

The reason it was critical for Shero and Kekalainen to be at the rink early is Rinne was the backup for current Minnesota Wild goalie Niklas Backstrom, who played the vast majority of games.

"I told Ray, there is a goalie I like on this team, but he is not going to play," said Janne Kekalainen, the brother of Columbus Blue Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen. "So you will have to check him out in the warmup."

When the Predators drafted Rinne in the eighth round of 1994, they made that pick on the strength of seeing him play in six periods and a couple of warmups.

Eleven years later, Rinne could be on his way to winning his first Vezina Trophy as top NHL goalie.

But the plotline that should be gaining traction is Rinne being in the hunt to win the Hart Trophy as league MVP.

Only six goalies have won the Hart Trophy, and Jacques Plante (1962), Dominik Hasek (1997 and 1998) and Jose Theodore (2002) are the only ones to win it over the past 53 years.

The Hart Trophy is for the player judged to be "most valuable to his team."

It would be hard to believe any player has been more valuable than Rinne has been to the Predators.

The statistic that illustrates Rinne's value: The Predators have won 26 games, and Rinne has been the winning goalie in all of them.

Rinne missed 51 games last season because of hip surgery and a resulting infection. He was rusty and off his game when he returned, and the Predators missed the playoffs.

This season, Rinne has the NHL's best overall goaltending numbers and the Predators have the NHL's second-best record.

Members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association historically have not shown love to goalies or defensemen in Hart balloting. Rinne isn't even listed on the most recent Bovada odds for the Hart Trophy. Sidney Crosby is the favorite at 11-5.

But Rinne's Hart candidacy could be successful this season because there is no overwhelming favorite. You can make a case for Anaheim's Ryan Getzlaf or Dallas' Tyler Seguin or Pittsburgh's Crosby or Evgeni Malkin.

It's easy to build a case for Rinne, who has a 2.00 goals-against average and .929 save percentage.

Since last spring, he has looked like the world's most confident hockey player. He was voted MVP at the world championships last spring. This season, he has thwarted 18 of 21 shootout attempts. He has given up two or fewer goals in 25 of his 34 starts.

All the Predators know is they are thankful Janne Kekalainen put Rinne on their radar.

Kekalainen saw Rinne play once for Karpat's farm team and liked what he saw. He invited Nashville's Sweden-based scout to watch Rinne play for the farm team and the goalie was pulled after giving up five goals in 40 minutes.

"So he's a 21-year-old goalie who had been through three drafts (without being selected) and in his last viewing, he was pulled after two," Janne Kekalainen said, laughing. "So it wasn't like it was, 'Let's go get this guy.'"

But Kekalainen liked Rinne's 6-5 size, and his quickness and agility. Plus, he received glowing reports from Rinne's goaltending coach.

"I thought the raw material was excellent," Kekalainen recalled. "It just needed to be polished."

Before the 2004 draft, Kekalainen made a presentation about Rinne at the team's scouting meeting. It didn't help that none of the team's North American scouts had seen Rinne.

Late in the draft, the team had all but run out of players it had targeted. Kekalainen says assistant amateur scouting director Greg Royce walked around the table asking if anyone felt passionate about a player to draft in the eighth round.

Kekalainen spoke on Rinne's behalf. The decision was made to draft him 258th overall. He did improve the following season, but no one was projecting greatness for him. When Rinne was signed by the Predators, his signing bonus was less than $10,000, an indication he was not considered a can't-miss prospect.

But Rinne had an important ally early in his first training camp in Nashville.

"After two days at training camp," Kekalainen recalled, "we started to talk about our players and (coach) Barry Trotz said about Pekka, 'This guy will be our No. 1 goalie someday.'"

It should be noted that Shero supported Kekalainen's request that Rinne be selected in the eighth round.

"Let me tell you one thing," Shero said, laughing. "He had a heck of a warmup when I was there."