My man Bryan Bastin said it perfectly last night: Never has a meaningless game standings-wise felt so fun.
This game was all about one man. Officially, we don’t know what Pekka Rinne’s future holds. But by the end of the postgame celebration, you got the feeling this was officially it for #35. And if it was...dear God, you could not write a better send-off for a man who’s been the face of Smashville for so many years.
As the saves piled up, we forgot about Pekka’s age; we forgot about his recent struggles with form. We were taken back to the early 2010’s, and all of those times Rinne sometimes single-handedly carried the Preds to victories they had no business stealing.