Rinne ready to compete with Saros for No. 1 job with Predators

Pekka Rinne said he knows he will have to beat out Juuse Saros in training camp if he wants to be the starting goalie for the Nashville Predators in the Stanley Cup Qualifiers.

"I'm happy with [a competition]," Rinne said at the first day of camp on Monday. "[Saros] was so strong at the end of the season."

Saros was 12-5-1 with a 2.22 goals-against average, a .934 save percentage and four shutouts in his last 20 games (18 starts) before the NHL season was paused March 12 due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus. The 25-year-old was 17-12-4 with a 2.70 GAA and .914 save percentage in an NHL career-high 40 games (34 starts) this season.

"It's been awesome. I couldn't ask for a better guy to be a goalie partner with," Saros said Tuesday. "Whatever it is, on or off the ice, he helps me. It's always fun to come to the rink, we're good friends outside of hockey too, and especially now during Phase 2 and 3, he's been cooking a lot of dinner for us Finns, and we've been playing Call of Duty, so we have a lot of fun together."

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Rinne made 35 starts, his fewest in a full NHL season. He had an NHL career-worst 3.17 GAA and was 50th out of 52 goalies to play at least 25 games with a .895 save percentage. The 37-year-old started five of Nashville's final 19 games from Feb. 1-March 11.

"That was a long time I was watching games at the end of the season, and I had no problem with the way [Saros] was playing ... I wasn't playing as strong," Rinne said.

Nashville was 35-26-8 (.565 points percentage) in the regular season and enters the Qualifiers as the No. 6 seed in the Western Conference. It will play the No. 11 seed, the Arizona Coyotes (33-29-8, .529), in one of four best-of-5 series that will begin at Rogers Place in Edmonton, the West hub city, on Aug. 2.

The winner of the series will advance to the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and the loser will have a 12.5 percent chance to win the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NHL Draft in the Second Phase of the NHL Draft Lottery.

Rinne has the postseason experience for the Predators, starting all 89 of their Stanley Cup Playoff games since 2010. He is 45-44 with a 2.49 GAA and .914 save percentage, and he helped Nashville advance to the Cup Final for the first time in its history in 2017 before losing to the Pittsburgh Penguins in six games.

But since that run, Rinne has gone 9-10 with a 3.08 GAA and .904 save percentage in the past two playoffs. Saros played five games in relief during that span, posting a 1.13 GAA and .952 save percentage (60 saves on 63 shots).

"I try not to take anything for granted and try to give my all, do my best and see what happens," Rinne said. "Everybody knows we have a great relationship, but at the same time, it's a great competition and we both understand that. We'll see how it plays out, but I think from both our perspectives, the only thing we want to do is help the team, no matter which guy is playing."

John Hynes, who replaced Peter Laviolette as Predators coach on Jan. 7, said he hasn't made a decision on who will start for Nashville in Game 1 of the Qualifiers.

"I haven't really gone that far," he said. "Our focus is getting prepared for camp. I understand the questions about the goaltenders, but there's not going to be a different answer until probably later in camp because it's not fair to the players and our mindset isn't that far ahead. Our mindset isn't Game 1, our mindset is let's have a great second day of training camp.

"We have to be ready to compete at a high level and right now, you do take into account with the goalies how they started the season, their tendencies, the back-to-backs. But the No. 1 thing is we have to make a decision, and hopefully one of the two makes it for us in a positive way."

Hynes said whoever he chooses will give full support to the other.

"I haven't seen anything like it in my career. Pekka Rinne as a human being and a pro and teammate, is unbelievable," he said. "My first couple times on the bench when there's a timeout and one of them comes back to the bench, they flip each other the water bottle, they give each other high fives, they kind of communicate, and I would say when [Juuse] was playing a lot down the stretch, Pekka's support of him on the bench, when he came over to him ... just almost a look like, 'Hey, keep going. I'm proud of you.'"