ANAHEIM — They don’t ask how, they just ask how many.
It’s one of hockey’s Original Six clichés for goal-scorers, who get as much credit for the pucks that go in off the back of their pants as the ones they snipe top shelf.
When you’re a goalie however, both questions apply. They ask how and they ask how many.
The “how many” hurt Nashville’s usually impenetrable Pekka Rinne in a 5-3, Game 2 loss Sunday at Anaheim.
But the how? That really stung. Particularly on the game-winner by Nick Ritchie, a goal Rinne simply has to stop.
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At the other end, John Gibson surrendered a breakaway goal to Ryan Johansen just 4:18 into the game, then inexplicably pulled off his post at the moment James Neal took a pass along the goal-line, making for one of the easier tucks of Neal’s playoff career.
“I just lost sight of it for a second,” said Gibson, who says little when he plays well, and even less the rest of the time.
At the other end, Rinne had come into the game with a league-leading .950 save percentage. Once ahead 2-0, there was a genuine feeling that asking the Ducks to score three on Rinne every night was the recipe for a very short series.
Until, that is, Finnish defenceman Sami Vatanen wired a slapper far side on Rinne, breathing life into the Ducks with exactly one minute left in what had been a moribund first period for Anaheim.
It was a hell of a shot by Vatanen that required a hell of a save by Rinne. Usually he delivers.
“The first one was a laser. A cannon,” said Nashville head coach Peter Laviolette. “It was hard, it was quick, and he got everything into it. And he put in about the only spot he could.”
Vatanen was not quite so complimentary of his snipe: “I saw he was standing a little bit off the net, and I had a shot there, off the blocker side,” said the product of the central Finnish town of Jyvaskyla. “I closed my eyes, shot it as hard as I could, and it went in.”
The winner would come off the stick of Ritchie, another shot from a distance that needed to be stopped. It burned past Rinne’s ear, and even though most observers cringed as Rinne swept the puck out of his goal, you couldn’t find a teammate or coach who would take the first step down that “Bad Pekka” road.
And rightfully so.
“He’s the best goalie in the league,” said Filip Forsberg. “He’s the reason that we are where we are. I think he’s playing well today, too.”
Allowing four goals and an empty-netter shouldn’t be that big a deal. In fact, we should all celebrate when we get 5-3 instead of 3-2. And with the speed of the game in 2017, perhaps the trend is towards more scoring. We can only hope.
“The deeper you go into the playoffs, the more games you play, you’re going to see inconsistencies,” said Ducks coach Randy Carlyle. “Every goaltender can’t have a save percentage of .950 and above for extended series. The players are too good. There are too many variables.”
Here’s what’s not a variable: Ryan Kesler getting under the skin of his opponent’s first-line centre. This round, that player is Johansen, who has already had his fill of the tenacious checker only two games into this 1-1 series.
“He just blows my mind, watching what’s going through his head out there,” began Johansen. “His family and friends watching him play — I don’t know how you cheer for a guy like that.”
We watched Connor McDavid wear Kesler like a beaver skin throughout Round 2, with the constant whacks and hacks that simply overwhelm a referee’s ability to properly officiate the relationship. Now it’s Johansen’s turn, and it appears he’s never taken a room in Chez Kesler before.
“I’m just trying to go out there and play hockey and it sucks when you’ve got to pull a stick out of your groin every shift,” said Johansen, who has never met a checker who is quite so, er, handsy. “Oh no. Not at all. He doesn’t do anything that makes sense. He’s just … he thinks he’s getting under guys’ skin but he’s just … I don’t know what he’s doing.
“Really, I can’t even put a finger on it.”
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