TAMPA, Fla. — Out came Pekka Rinne on Thursday, leading the Predators onto the ice after a brief stint on injured reserve.
They really needed him, too. The Tampa Bay Lightning pelted Rinne with 43 shots, 42 of which he stopped with varying degrees of difficulty in the Predators’ victory. All was right in their world again.
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In Juuse Saros’ world, it was business as usual. He capably handled starting duties for five games in Rinne’s absence, but it was back to backing up. Such is life at this stage of Saros’ career.
“It’s a different situation,” Saros said Thursday morning of his first opportunity to start consecutive games in the NHL. “It’s a lot of fun to play a lot. At the same time, you’ve got to move on fast from the last game because (the) next game is in two days. Of course, every game is a different situation, so there’s still new things that come to me in this league that I can learn. It was a good experience.”
What did we learn about Saros during his temporary run as the Predators’ No. 1 goaltender, a position he’s being groomed for in the not-so-distant future? Nothing we didn’t already know, really.
The team has complete confidence in him. He showed promise — a 2.62 goals-against average, .919 overall save percentage and .939 5-on-5 save percentage — but also that he still has room to grow. No surprise there.
“It’s nice to hear the guys trust in me,” Saros said. “I played for a little bit in this league already, so I kind of know I’m capable of that. But I can still improve and be better each game.”
“It’s huge,” Rinne said. “Just builds your confidence, that feeling that you belong and you can play games in a row, play as a No.1 goalie. That’s big for (Saros) and big for our team, too.”
If there was a silver lining to Rinne’s injury, it was that Saros was given a chance to start a stretch of games with little pressure. Chris Mason got his break in similar fashion — though he was 30 to Saros’ 23 — when Tomas Vokoun required thumb surgery in November 2006, starting 21 consecutive games.
“In the middle of the season, you’re playing the next game, obviously, and you just keep going from there,” Mason said. “You’re in the moment. I found it more difficult after that season when it was the start of the season and I was named the starter. … (When) you still know that Vokoun or whoever’s there, you have sort of a security blanket. You know that it’s not completely on you, but when you’re the guy, it’s a different mindset. You don’t have your Tomas Vokoun or your Pekka Rinne there to bail you out. It’s on you. … It took me a while to be able to handle that.”
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In evaluating Saros’ play, Mason highlighted the Predators’ loss to the San Jose Sharks on Oct. 23, when they surrendered three late goals.
“As a backup, if you have that game, you’re not going to play for maybe a week or 10 days, so you can go back to the drawing board, look at the video, work on stuff in practice and mentally prepare for next game,” Mason said. “But when you’re the starter, you’ve got to brush that off immediately and put in an ‘A’ performance two days later. That’s what makes the best guys in the league elite is their ability to brush off those performances and then play at a high level. I thought he responded well.”
For now, Rinne, who turns 36 on Saturday, has taken back his starting job. As evidenced by his return performance against the Lightning, he’s far from ready to hand it over. But Saros’ turn as the Predators’ starter was an encouraging glimpse of what’s to come.
“Until you do something, there’s always questions and doubt of whether you can do it or not,” Mason said. “For me and for him, you kind of prove to yourself, ‘Hey, I can handle this workload.’ And the coaches see that. I think knowing is more powerful than thinking somebody can do something. When they actually do it, it reinforces what you thought already and what you hoped would be the case.
“It’s a perfect sample size for him and for everybody else because that was one of the questions, ‘Well, can he do it when he’s playing every night?’ It was only five games, but he handled that five-game segment almost perfectly. You’re not going to win every game, but I thought the way he responded to a tough game tells me a lot about his mental fortitude. You see that when he plays games anyway, but it’s not the same as when you’re playing every single night. I thought he responded well to that adversity. Small sample size, but I thought he passed the test.”
(Top photo: John Russell / NHLI via Getty Images)