‘The right guy got the Vezina’ – Rinne on Lundqvist and EA Sports NHL 13
New York Rangers netminder Henrik Lundqvist won the Vezina Trophy for top goaltender in the League. It is the second consecutive year that Pekka Rinne was nominated but did not win the award.
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Rinne finished third in voting.
“The right guy got the Vezina,” Rinne said, adding, “Lundqvist had a great season. I am sure it is always a tight race. Hopefully, in the future – that is one of my goals and dreams. For sure, I am honored to be here and be nominated.”
While Rinne lost out on the Awards, his teammates that are also representing the Predators in Las Vegas this week had high remarks for the Finnish netminder.
“I think that everyone knows now that he isn’t really a hidden gem anymore,” Captain Shea Weber said. “You watch us play and you can see how much he means to us. Some of those games when we get out to a slow start and he is stopping 20 shots in the first period, those might be games where we could have been out of it really early.”
Foundation Player Award winner Mike Fisher agrees.
“Night in and night out, Pekka is constantly a star for us and is unbelievable. He is the best goalie I have played with,” he said.
Rinne also lost in the finals to Philadelphia Flyers forward Claude Giroux in the cover vote for EA Sports NHL 13, but not all is lost. Rinne says rumor has it, his cover will be sold in his home country of Finland and some other European countries.
“I can’t tell that for sure, but that is a rumor. We’ll see,” Rinne said.
Though Rinne is not on Twitter, his agent, Jay Grossman, kept him up-to-date as to what was happening on the social media site.
“My agent was doing a pretty good job sending me emails and links. I would read the links and see a lot of the tweets and news around the campaign. It was fun,” Rinne explained.
Rinne and Giroux were both brought up onto the stage at the NHL Awards for the unveiling of the new videogame cover. The Nashville netminder had no idea whether or not it was his cover or that of Giroux.
“They kept the secret pretty good,” he said. “It could have gone one way or the other.”
