Goalie Concerns in Nashville

After posting a shootout win on Wednesday night against the Blue Jackets, it came as quite the shock that Pekka Rinne will now miss the next 2-to-4 weeks after suffering an injury to his left knee.  Rinne apparently suffered the injury during the game, but a visit with the doctors on Friday, likely due to the injury, found that the injury is a lot more severe and some time away from the line-up will be needed to heal properly.  It will be interesting to see how this will affect the Predators and their season as a whole, as they currently sit one point out of a playoff spot in 12th place in the West.

Anders Lindback will now take the reins as the number one goalie for the Predators, while Mike Dekanich has been called up from the minors to back him up.

Rinne hasn't had the best of starts to the season, but the first sign of that would be seeing where the Predators are in the standings, but a 8-7-4 record in 19 starts isn't anything to really sneeze at either, especially with 3 shutouts to his name, racking up 22 points for the pool this season.  His 22 points is good enough to be 61st in pool scoring going into Friday's action, 18th among goalies.

In total, Rinne could be missing out on up to 14 starts in the next month, which is a sizable chunk of the season, but on the brighter outlook, a couple weeks means it could only be six games, a more manageable number for the Predators.

The biggest question now is whether or not this injury will be bad enough for Allan S., the pool leader, to drop Rinne to protect his lead, making sure he has at least a healthy goalie on his team for the next 2-to-4 weeks of the next nine.  Oh the intrigue!