Pekka Rinne, Nashville Predators Prove the Naysayers Wrong

In one of the biggest shockers of the playoffs, the so-called experts picked all the favorites to advance to the second round. 

Yet, some of us were still brave enough to pick an underdog, and the Nashville Predators have stepped up and won their first playoff series in franchise history to prove that it doesn't always pay to follow the herd. 

Without a doubt, Nashville Predators fans will always remember 2011's Easter Sunday as they saw their team win a statement game in a statement series.

It might come as a surprise that Nashville eliminated the red-hot Anaheim Ducks, but the true surprise of this series was all the scoring.  No one expected Anaheim to dominate on the power play the way they did, and it was even more surprising that the Predators lit the lamp game in and game out the way they did. 

Every single game in this series went over the Las Vegas total.

Yet, perhaps the most talked-about aspect of this series was the performance of Pekka Rinne.  He was named a finalist for the Vezina Trophy two days ago and not a single person in the NHL disputed the merits of his nomination, despite the long list of worthy candidates.  

In this series, he didn't have the numbers that he did in the regular season, but if you've been around the NHL long enough, you'll understand that the most important category in the playoffs is wins. 

In this column, Rinne has four, and that's enough to put his team in the second round. 

In fact, it's unlikely that Rinne's critics even watched most of this series.  Even though they had the most famous cheerleader watching the games in Carrie Underwood, the ratings for this series have been poor outside of the regional demographics.

This suggests that many on the East Coast chose to catch up on their sleep instead of staying up late to catch this fantastic series.  Others were busy watching the more glamorous matchups. 

And the rest didn't even have the game on their cable or satellite provider.  This is a shame, because they missed on some of the best hockey of the opening round.

Having said that, it wasn't always pretty for the blue-collar Predators.

The Nashville defense had an uncharacteristic series.  There were too many breakdowns and missed assignments that resulted in many goals that Rinne had no chance to stop. 

This was somewhat inevitable, though. 

We are talking about the best top line in the NHL in Perry, Getzlaf and Ryan.  The Ducks also boast the most dangerous power play in the league.

Nevertheless, Rinne overcame these challenges and continued to battle.  He stole a page out of the Grant Fuhr playbook and kept his team in enough games to give them a chance. 

The Predators offense took full advantage of those opportunities.  A different player stepped up in every game to provide timely goals and collectively put this team over the top, despite the Hollywood names on the other side of the ice.

Last season, the biggest problem heading into the offseason was closing the deal. They let a glorious chance slip away in Game 5 versus the defending champion Chicago Blackhawks, and it haunted them the entire summer. 

Coach Barry Trotz harped on this the entire regular season.  Late in the year, they got a rude reminder of this challenge when the Predators took a commanding 5-1 lead against the same Anaheim Ducks, but let them climb their way back in a 5-4 nail biter. 

They repeated the same pattern just a week later against the Detroit Red Wings.

This time around, all the players took it upon themselves to finish what they started.  The team took the series lead three different times, but in the critical Game 6 at home, they closed the door on the Ducks and finally overcome the franchise hex.

The final nail in the coffin didn't come without its challenges, though. 

The referees did their best to deny the Predators the lead in the third period by disallowing what everyone in the building knew was a good goal.  Yet, that didn't stop Pekka Rinne from catching the Ducks on a line change, and third-line standout Nick Spaling finished it off by scoring his second of the game to put Nashville ahead for the final time.  

At this point, the Predators don't know who will be their second-round opponent, but suffice to say they will provide a monumental fork in the road to whomever that team may be. 

There's not a single team in the league that wants to face Pekka Rinne and the Nashville home crowd, but after witnessing what we saw in this series, could anybody blame them?