Like many players in the American Hockey League, Pekka Rinne is biding his time.
The 25-year-old goaltender is in his third season with the Milwaukee Admirals. During his time with the team, Rinne has put up some impressive numbers and has twice been named an all star.
"He's the backbone to our hockey team," says Admirals head coach Lane Lambert. "We rely on him heavily back there and he's done a real good job for us."
When parent club Nashville dealt one of the NHL's best goalies -- Thomas Vokoun -- to Florida during the offseason, it seemed logical that Rinne would make a permanent move to the big leagues.
Instead, the Predators -- who were set on Chris Mason and Dan Ellis between the pipes -- sent Rinne back to Milwaukee for another season of conditioning.
"I wouldn't say it was a surprise but obviously I was disappointed," Rinne says. "I worked hard the whole summer. Playing a lot of games, though, is the best practice. I try to be consistent every single night and there's some areas I need to get better at."
He would go on to be the Admirals' lone representative to the AHL All-Star Game last weekend in Binghamton, N.Y. Rinne, who competed as a member of the PlanetUSA team, was named the Top Goaltender during the skills competition after stopping 16 of 19 Team Canada shots.
"I think he's where we want him to be," Lane Lambert, the Admirals' head coach, says. "He's played a lot of hockey for us and at some point here, with all the games we've got coming up, we need to find a way to get him a bit of a rest. I think it might sharpen him up a little bit."
Rinne has been a workhorse for Milwaukee so far. He's started 41 of the 46 games played by the Admirals this season and leads all AHL goaltenders with 2,445 minutes. He's also the league leader in shots faced with 1,109.
"The only concern that I have for Pekka is just that fatigue doesn't take over for him," Lambert says. "If it does, then he's going to need a break."
An eighth-round draft pick in 2004 (258th overall), Rinne was originally the backup to Brian Finley. Finley, a first-round choice who was constantly held back by injury problems, eventually lost the top job to Rinne.
The rookie appeared in 50 games with the Admirals, posting a 29-18-2 record with a 2.86 goals-against average. His performance led to a brief, four-day call-up to Nashville in December. Rinne posted a victory in his NHL debut then returned to Milwaukee and earned himself the starting job in the AHL All-Star Game.
Rinne was against brought up to Nashville as the Predators added depth for the playoffs. In Milwaukee, meanwhile, the Admirals faced a crucial Game 7 of their first-round series with Cincinnati. The Predators had just been knocked out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, losing a Western Conference Quarterfinal series to San Jose, 4-1.
Rinne, along with offensive powerhouse Jordain Tootoo and defenseman Scottie Upshall, made it back for the clinching game and for the next few weeks, nobody was hotter than Rinne. The rookie won nine straight games including three shutouts before running into a buzz saw against Hershey in the Calder Cup Finals.
The Bears beat Milwaukee in six games for the Championship, thanks in small part to Rinne's inability to handle the Hershey offense. Rinne struggled and was pulled twice. He finished the Finals with a 4.25 GAA.
"He has all the skills in the world," said then-head coach Claude Noel said after the loss. "Now he has to learn how to overcome the fear of failure. It's just part of maturity and part of the game."
He was expected to return the next season and become a dominant force in the league, but those plans were derailed during a night out over the summer.
Rinne was outside a nightspot in his native Finland when he was jumped by several people. Rinne, in a subsequent interview, said he thinks that it may have been an attempted mugging. Nonetheless, Rinne would miss the first half of the 2006-'07 season after undergoing surgery to repair a dislocated shoulder.
For a short while, Rinne thought he may have been finished with hockey, but the surgery was successful and he returned to the ice in late January. It took Rinne some time to re-adjust to game action, but still finished with a 15-7-6 record, stopping 752 shots and allowing 2.34 goals per game.
Off the ice, Rinne emerged as a leader in the locker room. As one of the longest-tenured members of the team, he takes an active role in helping the new faces get acclimated to the game -- which differs in many ways from the European game -- as well as the city.
During training camp, Rinne helped many of the team's foreign players learn the lay of the land in Milwaukee; he helped players find apartments, sign up for phones, cable and Internet services and show them where the grocery stores were.
"He has especially been helpful with the Europeans on our roster," Lambert says. "He's smart, he's really intelligent and mature and he's truly a terrific person. He has helped these guys and our hockey team as a leader in the dressing room.
"He's a terrific person for our hockey team, on and off the ice."
The focus now is on helping the Admirals return to the Calder Cup Finals. The NHL, obviously, is the dream and focus of any AHL player, but no matter how good a player is, there needs to be a matter of luck involved, as well.
That's especially true for goalies, as most NHL teams only carry two on their rosters.
"I feel really confident," Rinne says. "It's never a lock, there are things that need to happen; trades or injuries that open a spot. You just have to play consistent and not just one year. Hard work is what gets you there."
