Brace yourselves, Smashville. He’s en route. (Photo Credit: Scott Paulus)
The initial plan was for Pekka Rinne to make starts on Friday and Sunday as part of his conditioning assignment. It turns out that’s all that he will need. He is headed to the airport shortly after his second consecutive win for the Admirals and should be sleeping in the comforts of Nashville later tonight.
In his return to Milwaukee he made two starts, won both games, stopped thirty-three of thirty-five shots on goal, had a 0.99 GAA, and a 0.943 SV%. It was his first taste of game action since missing four-months due to an infection related to his off-season hip surgery. In my opinion, he wasn’t tested all that often – but his game today definitely had him moving around and working hard on tracking loose pucks due to several blocked shots. He also looked incredibly confident in skating around and playing pucks.
It might not have been long. But it was long enough. I feel his conditioning for a full length game went over alright on Friday but even more so when tasked with a defensive-minded overtime game today. He seems more than physically ready to return. And that’s precisely why his conditioning assignment should end here and now.
The Nashville Predators next game is on Tuesday night against the Pittsburgh Penguins. They also have the St. Louis Blues (Thursday), and Blue Jackets (Saturday) all coming into Nashville.
What are your thoughts from Pekka Rinne’s conditioning assignment? How did he look? Should he have played one more game before heading back to the NHL or was this enough? Where do the Admirals go from here with their netminders? Remember, Magnus Hellberg is close to returning as well.
Noted “Good Guy” Charles-Olivier Roussel had himself a day to remember. He scored the Admirals lone goals, including the game-winner in overtime, against the Rochester Americans. (Photo Credit: Scott Paulus)
The Admirals won 2-1 in overtime against the Rochester Americans Sunday afternoon.
Pekka Rinne wasn’t tested too much from this game, stopping seventeen of eighteen shots, but exerted himself past regulation and seemed no worse for the wear.
Charles-Olivier Roussel goes down as today’s hero. He entered today’s game having only scored one goal all season. He scored twice today – including a backhander for the game-winner in overtime.
It took the Rochester Americans more than six-minutes to register a shot on Pekka Rinne and their opening ten minutes were rather slow. It wasn’t until 14:14 when they had sustained pressure and that was due to a five-on-three power-play that lasted 0:33 seconds. Mark Van Guilder made a fantastic individual play, while laying down on the ice, to deny a shot and then clear the zone – effectively killing the two-man advantage.
The latter half of that power-play for the Americans was their best play of the period and required the most amount of work from Rinne that he had in the opening frame. It was less about setting up chances and throwing pucks to the net and Rinne held his own. He would finish the first period with six saves – most of which came late in the period.
The second period cruised by with some penalties here and there but neither team could find the back of the net. That came mainly due to an incredible defensive effort put up by both sides making blocked shot after blocked shot. The shots in the period were only 8-5 in the favor of the Admirals.
The Americans did do plenty of good things offensively, lots of plays tight to the front of Rinne’s net, but just couldn’t get their shots on target. Block. Block. Block. It felt a lot like that during the second period.
The deadlock was finally broken in the third period by one of the most ludicrous goals of the season. Charles-Olivier Roussel flew down the right wing wall, tossed a puck on net, was all the way to the end boards by the Wisconsin Vision graphic, threw his rebound off of Nathan Lieuwen and in for his second goal of the season.
During the thrill of that moment the Americans won the faceoff, flew a pass through neutral, found Jamie Tardif, and scored a full seven-seconds after the Admirals goal. There were no defensemen back off the faceoff loss. Tardif’s goal went underneath Rinne for his seventeenth goal of the season.
The game would haul into overtime – the Admirals arch nemesis this season. Rochester had a golden opportunity to bury the game after a rare Rinne fumble behind his net. Having lost the handle on a puck, Rinne was left sprinting back to the front of his cage only to see a puck ping of far post and fly out. Luke Adam had an entire net to shoot at and he missed the winner by just that much.
When it comes to goal scoring – these last two games have been phenomenal for Ads defenseman. Having scored once already in the game, Roussel put the finishing touches on the game after a great pass from Austin Watson turned him loose directly in front of Lieuwen. He whipped a backhander out of the bag and picked up his third goal of the season – second of the game – and gave the Admirals two wins under the Pekka Rinne microscope.
Thoughts from today’s game? What have you made of the Admirals defense in these last two games? Is this level of play something we can expect from the Admirals moving forward? Who starts in net from this point?
Pekka Rinne greatly enjoyed the fan response for his return to Milwaukee and game action on Friday night. I expect the noise levels to continue today. (Photo Credit: Porscha Kae)
First off, I highly expect a bunch of website views from North Korea and much much more thanks to the lovely title for today’s scouting report (cringe, sigh, repeat).
The Admirals are freshly removed from a 9-1 thrashing of the Iowa Wild that ended their season long five-game winless streak. Pekka Rinne was heavily under the microscope in that game and he will be again today. He didn’t have too much strenuous work against the Wild on Friday. He’ll be playing against a team today in the Rochester Americans that has scored 2+ goals in six-consecutive games. In that stretch they’ve averaged 29.7 shots on goal per game. Rinne had his game length conditioning test Friday. He’ll have a much bigger work out today.
While there was plenty of hype surrounding Rinne on Friday, justly, he was outshined by an Admiral offense that finally burst to life.
It begs asking. Can the Ads possibly comeback today with an offensive performance remotely close to Friday’s outburst? I’m not talking same scoreline… that would be silly… but the last time they scored 4+ goals in back-to-back games was 1/12/14 vs. Lake Erie and 1/16/14 @ San Antonio. Before that? 12/6/13 vs. Oklahoma City and 12/12/13 vs. Oklahoma City. In short, they tend to not sustain their offense that often. If Friday was the beginning of the Ads playoff push – it desperately needs that kind of an offense that can deliver so accurately from their chances.
Right now the Admirals have a record of 24-19-6-6 (60 points) and sit in fourth place of the Midwest Division – as well as the bubble spot, eighth place, of the Western Conference. They trail the Rockford IceHogs in the division by six-points – but have four-games in the bag to play with compared to the IceHogs. Today they’ll be playing against the team that sits above them in the conference, Rochester. They trail them by three-points and, shockingly, Rochester is one of only seven teams to have played less games than the Ads have this season. Perhaps the Ads schedule has finally caught up with the rest of the league?
The Rochester Americans record entering this afternoon’s game is 28-19-3-4 (63 points). They comfortably sit in second place of the North division trailing the Toronto Marlies by five-points and sit ahead of the Hamilton Bulldogs by eight-points. In the Americans last ten-games they have gone 6-3-0-1 (13 points). Good run, but they were roughed up by the Amtrak Rivals on Friday by a score of 6-2. It’ll be interesting to watch, for both teams, who we’re watching on the ice off of up and down Friday performances.
The ‘Mericans are led in scoring by Phil Varone who has played in 47 games and produced 43 points (12 goals, 31 assists). He earned his first career NHL call up during this season and played 9 games with the Buffalo Sabres where he scored 2 points (1 goal, 1 assist).
Leading the ‘Muricans in goal scoring is AHL All Star from this season, Luke Adam. He has 24 goals this season for Rochester. The next closest to him in that department is Jamie Tardif with 16 goals.
With Pekka Rinne added to the season stats for the Admirals – they have now had five different goaltenders play for them this season. That is the most since the 2010-11 season when they had the likes of Mark Dekanich, Jeremy Smith, Atte Engren, Anders Lindback, and Chet Pickard. I say this because Rochester has comfortably rotated a two-man battery the entire season.
Matt Hackett has had the majority of games this season: 31 games, 13 wins, 2.89 GAA, and 0.904 SV%. Nathan Lieuwen, playing in his first full professional season, has played in 26 games, won 15 games, 2.39 GAA, 0.920 SV%, and has 2 shutouts to his name. The rookie has had the better numbers this season. With Hackett taking the loss on Friday, conceding 6 goals from 37 shots by the Chicago Wolves, I anticipate a match up of Lieuwen against Rinne. Lieuwen has won his last two-starts – but has also allowed 2+ goals in his previous seven games.
What should we expect from today’s game? Will we see a drastic drop off from the Admirals today or can they carry Friday’s momentum? What do you anticipate from Pekka Rinne in his second rehab start? Will this be Rinne’s last appearance on conditioning assignment?
From his time in Milwaukee, Nashville, and Sochi – Simon Moser now adds his first career NHL goal to to a list of great memories from an already banner first year in North America. (Photo Credit: John Russell)
The Nashville Predators played this afternoon against the Winnipeg Jets. While they did go on to lose at home by the final of 3-1 there was a silver lining for fans of the organization – Simon Moser picked up his first career NHL goal.
Moser was set up in front of Ondrej Pavelec and battling defenseman Mark Stuart for net-front positioning. Michael Del Zotto whipped a puck from the left-wing wall towards the net and Moser just got a piece of it as the shot traveled through to goal. You can watch the highlight of his first career goal right here.
With this happening and his great Olympic tournament for Team Switzerland – safe to say we’ve seen the last of Moser in Milwaukee? Where do you see his career in the NHL going?
Dear Corbin Baldwin: If you’re going to talk smack and play dirty the whole night – we have our own Sheriff. (Photo Credit: Scott Paulus)
The Admirals game last night may have been the most fun I had around a hockey rink – period. They won soundly by the tune of 9-1 over the Iowa Wild. Pekka Rinne made his highly anticipated return to game action – and the city of Milwaukee (for that matter). And the fans last night only added to what was a brilliant game, start to finish, by the Ads as they broke out of their five-game winless skid emphatically.
Having spent my whole day around the Bradley Center yesterday – the most I could tell you about that team going into the game was they looked looser than I’ve seen in a long time. During the pre-game skate, I noticed so many players smiling, laughing, and joking around. The last few games during this run it has looked all business, serious, and stressed out. But, yesterday, they were back to having fun again – and I feel it translated directly into the game.
For Pekka Rinne, he may not have had the most action packed of nights but that isn’t the worst thing either. Had he been in Hannu Toivonen‘s place we might be talking about the game that re-broke Nashville’s starting goaltender… I believe that would have made this the “Oops Edition” of the Chatterbox had that happened. I think the fact that he took a little run into by the Wild on their first shot of the game really helped to get him over any sort of return to the game jitters. He wasn’t forced to do much. But looked good when he had to make a stop. I doubt we get a game as run and gun for the Admirals as this one was on Sunday. It should be a much bigger test for Rinne.
After the game, I had the chance to interview Dean Evason, Pekka Rinne, Joonas Jarvinen, Mike Liambas, and Joe Piskula. Here is what they all had to say following their massive 9-1 victory against Iowa. And you know what – we’re going with full interviews for this one!
Admirals Roundtable 