Even before he came to North America, David Rundblad already had some precious hockey souvenirs: sweaters from the two world junior championships he played in for his native Sweden, the puck from the first goal he scored in the Swedish Elite League, you get the idea.

But the puck he got Sunday night when he scored his first NHL goal is now the most precious item on the shelf.

No contest. “This one is special because it’s the one I’ve been dreaming about since I was a little kid,” he said Tuesday morning. “It was sure a relief to finally score.”

With any luck, it will also be the goal that ignites his NHL season, which, to this point, has been one of stops and starts. Maybe more stops than starts.

In Sweden last season, Rundblad was the Elite League’s most-celebrated defencemen. In Ottawa, he’s locked in a tug of war with Brian Lee for the No. 6 spot on defence and for playing time.

That has left both players just hoping to get into the lineup.

Rundblad has played 14 games and been scratched in nine. Lee has played 11 and been scratched in 12. For Tuesday’s game against the Jets, Rundblad was going to play No. 15 and Lee was going to sit for No. 13.

While it’s tough to offer a detailed progress report on a player who has been in and out of the lineup, coach Paul MacLean says he can see signs that Rundblad is feeling more comfortable and gaining confidence.

“I think that was displayed the other night with the confidence he had after missing (the previous five games),” MacLean said. “Just because you’re not playing doesn’t mean you don’t learn about the league and what’s going on, so I think he’s used his time wisely.”

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The surprising Edmonton Oilers have gotten a lot of attention because of young stars like Taylor Hall and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. However, it’s 38-year-old goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin who’s been the biggest difference between the team that finished 30th in the standings in 2010-11 and the one that takes a Northwest Division-leading 9-4-2 mark into Friday’s visit to Detroit.

Khabibulin will take the ice with a 7-0-2 record, a goals-against average of 0.98 and a save percentage of .964. His GAA after nine games is the lowest since the expansion era began 44 years ago. He has allowed just nine goals in nine games, and no more than two in any one contest.

At 38-years old, the numbers show Oilers goalie Nikolai Khabibulin is off to the best start of his NHL career.

Khabibulin has won his last six games, his longest winning streak in his two-plus seasons with the Oilers and the most by an Edmonton goaltender since Dwayne Roloson won six straight games in November 2006. The last time Khabibulin had a run like this was in November-December 2008, when he won seven in a row while playing for Chicago.

Though Khabibulin came into this season with 316 career wins and a Stanley Cup (with Tampa Bay in 2004), to say his performance so far this season came out of nowhere would be understating the case.

On the way to final totals of 10-32-4 with a 3.40 GAA and .890 save percentage last season, Khabibulin was 3-5-1 in his first nine games with a 3.00 GAA and a save percentage of .907. A season earlier, he was 5-3-1 after nine games, with a .902 save percentage. Even in 2003-04, his best season statistically and one that ended with him hoisting the Cup, he was 7-1-1 after nine games with a 1.98 GAA and .922 save percentage.

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When Kaspars Daugavins was called up, the expectations were largely that he will get a few games until Daniel Alfredsson comes back. However, Daugavins has played well in his six games with Ottawa. He is responsible defensively and has been very useful on the penalty kill. He averages 1:46 of penalty kill time, which is fifth among Senators forwards. It is worth mentioning though, that the Senators have taken 22 penalties in the six games Daugavins has played (3.67 penalties per game) and 46 in the nine games he hasn’t played (5.11 penalties per game). Daugavins has been a regular on the penalty kill, albeit on the second unit.

In the games that Daugavins has played, the Senators penalty kill has only allowed one goal while Daugavins was on the ice and four goals in total. To put it another way, the Senators penalty kill has been 18/22 for 81.8% in games when Daugavins plays and 33/46 for 71.7% in the nine games he hasn’t played. Of course, Daugavins hasn’t improved the penalty kill all by himself, but he’s certainly performed well on it.

Beyond the penalty kill, Daugavins isn’t completely one dimensional. He’s created a few scoring chances already in his short stint and he had 54 points in 73 games with Binghamton last year as well as 20 points in 23 playoff games.

When Daniel Alfredsson returns, will Kaspars Daugavins keep his place?

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Nikolai Khabibulin, the Edmonton Oilers rejuvenated goaltender, has become a curiosity of sorts, dusting off a game that hasn’t been in vogue since he was with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2003-04.

He was 31-years-old back then, not 38, and he wasn’t coming off the kind of season he had in 2010-11.

But written off as a goaltender past his prime, Khabibulin is still keeping company with the NHL’s leaders.

Just don’t ask him about the rave reviews he has been receiving.

“I don’t pay attention to any of it,” he said. “I haven’t gone on the Internet. I haven’t read any papers. I haven’t even gone to NHL.com.

“The first couple of years I was in the league, I would go through the stats, but then you are shifting your focus on the wrong things. You don’t need to know that a shooter has 60 points in 50 games. You just need to know he’s good and that you have to be ready.

“As far as having a great save percentage, well, then you start to focus on that instead of what you actually have to do to get there. I really stopped paying attention to all that.

“Plus we’re just 13 games in. Things can change drastically this time of the year. You have a couple of bad games and you’re just normal.

“I’ve seen it so many times. Guys will start out with 15 points in 10 games then they finish the season with 35. How good is that? I mean if it stays this way, great.

“If somehow it starts changing, then I’m not going to be thinking what if. I don’t want to know.”

The veteran, who got the night off against the Phoenix Coyotes so Devan Dubnyk could get in a game, will be back on the job Tuesday when the Oilers play the Montreal Canadiens.

He’ll tote his staggering stats –— .98 goals-against average, .963 save percentage and two shutouts — and do what he can to get the team back in the win column.

Khabibulin has not lost a game in regulation this season. At 6-0-2, he’s fifth in the win category.

“I think more about these things when things are not going well,” he said. “That bugs me more.”

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Smashville 24/7: First of all, your initial thoughts on Rinne’s contract?
Jay Grossman: Obviously there was a long decision-making process, and there are a lot of factors that go into something of this nature and magnitude. I was really proud of Pekka because he’s had two other contract negotiations, which from an agent standpoint, are interesting contracts. I don’t think he really envisioned himself being in this position at the start of his career when he first came over from North America. Quite frankly, we did not want this to go into the season, but it did go into the season. One of the things I was confident about is that he (Pekka) could handle that.

24/7: Pekka is now the highest paid goaltender in the NHL. Was that a goal of yours when the negotiation started?
JG: No, it wasn’t really a goal of ours. It was certainly a determination of what his value was or could be if it had gone to the open market. Representing goaltenders is a completely different marketplace than representing positional players. I think it takes a level of understanding, takes a level of weighing a number of different factors that go into the equation. In the end analysis, given his achievements of being second in the Vezina and fourth in the MVP voting – which I think is even more telling that the commitment needed to be substantial – we did not want to enter into a (Ilya) Bryzgalov or (Roberto) Luongo type of deal. We don’t view this as a career-ending deal, necessarily. Obviously, depending on his health, his frame of mind and the way he’s playing – it’s far enough off in the future not to have to think about it now, but you do have to think about it when you’re putting the pieces to the puzzle on a contract.

24/7: What was the message GM David Poile relayed to you about getting the ‘big three’ signed and all that?
JG: We didn’t talk a lot about the other guys. Certainly, Pekka is really close with those guys (Weber and Suter) and hopes that they stay, because he wants to play on the best team possible; those guys are the best at what they do. Initially, David did talk about those guys and building a team together. It sort of became clear that it wasn’t going to become a (Mickey) Mantle and (Roger) Maris type negotiation, where the guys were going to team up and have a pool of money and figure out how to divide the pie. We did reach a juncture where we said ‘Do we just put it off until July 1 or do we do the deal now?’ We made the determination to do the deal now.

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With the 7-year, $49 million contract extension they announced on Thursday, his 29th birthday, the Nashville Predators have signed Pekka Rinne to the largest deal in franchise history. They’ve also made him the highest-paid goaltender in the National Hockey League for players under contract in 2012-13, based on his $7 million annual cap hit.

“I wouldn’t say that was the intention,” Rinne’s agent Jay Grossman told Yahoo! Sports moments after the deal was announced.

“Essentially, it came down to the fact there was a commitment that needed to be made to a potential free agent who finished second in the Vezina Trophy voting and fourth in the MVP voting, [one] that was going to be substantial. The Predators made the commitment.”

…

For NHL goaltenders, only Rick DiPietro of the New York Islanders (15 years), Roberto Luongo of the Vancouver Canucks (12 years) and Ilya Bryzgalov of the Philadelphia Flyers (9 years) have longer contracts than Rinne’s. His $7 million cap hit next season places him above those of Henrik Lundqvist of the New York Rangers ($6.875 million) and Cam Ward of the Carolina Hurricanes ($6.3 million) for the most lucrative in the League.

How did the sides arrive at this contract, and what does it mean for Shea Weber and Ryan Suter?

In February 2010, Rinne signed a 2-year, $4-million deal with the Predators. “We signed a shorter-term deal in the last go round, which was only two years after a really strong performance,” said Grossman. “It gave him an opportunity to have his contract come back around. It allowed him to perform and achieve those things.”

Grossman said the sides talked about a variety of contract options in this negotiation. “One being a shorter-term contract, one being a longer one, more along the lines of what Luongo and Byrzgalov had done,” he said.

The reason they settled on seven years? The Collective Bargaining Agreement plays into it.

Rinne wanted something long-term, but “ruled out a lifetime kind of deal,” according to Grossman. This contract makes him a free agent at 36.

“We were pleased with the term. If the CBA stays the same, coming up at 34 or particularly at 35 is not a real good opportunity if the rules change, and how certain things count against the cap. So signing as a 35 year old is not really that wonderful position to be in, so we ruled out five and six years,” said Grossman.

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Before the start of the 2011-12 season, Nikolai Khabibulin was left for dead by just about everyone in the fantasy hockey world. Based on what we’d seen during his trying 2010-11 season — on and off the ice — it appeared that the former star had nothing left in the tank and would be between the pipes only occasionally to give Devan Dubnyk a break. It appeared Dubnyk, 25, would be the man to grow with this impressive collection of young talent, with Khabibulin offering some pointers during practice and occupying the end spot on the bench during most games. After all, Khabibulin posted a 10-32-4 record in 46 starts in 2010-11, with a 3.40 goals-against average and .890 save percentage (SV%) while Dubnyk was 12-13-8 with a 2.71 and .916, respectively. As a result, the 38-year-old native of Sverdlovsk went largely undrafted in fantasy leagues.

But instead of fading quietly into the night, it’s been a renaissance season for the veteran so far. His 5-0-2 record, along with a GAA of 1.12 and SV% of .960 (both tops in the NHL), led to his third-place finish for the October player of the month award, and the Oilers are atop the Northwest Division standings after 11 games. So will the owners in 93.9 percent of ESPN fantasy hockey leagues continue to be rewarded for their quick waiver-wire trigger finger? Or will Khabibulin’s play fall off to last season’s levels, rendering him a burden on an active fantasy roster?

To gain a better understanding of why Khabibulin is putting up gaudy numbers, it’s helpful to examine his play this season from quantitative and qualitative standpoints. In comments to the Edmonton Journal recently, Khabibulin was quick to deflect some praise to the men playing in front of him. “Technically, I don’t think I’m doing anything different from last year, but we’re blocking a lot of shots. … We’ve got the leader in the league,” he said. He speaks of Ladislav Smid, whose 40 blocked shots remains the top mark in the NHL. As a team, the Oilers have blocked 184 shots (16.7 per game) this season, good for third overall. However, this is not far off the pace at which they blocked shots in 2010-11; the skaters prevented 1,219 shots from reaching the net during that campaign, which is 14.9 per game, a rate that was 10th in the league. The season before that, they were fourth, blocking 15.9 shots per game, while Khabibulin had a 3.03 GAA and .909 SV%. In other words, while the per-game rate is a little higher, it doesn’t appear that the number of blocked shots is the reason for the turnaround, since this has been a staple of the Oilers’ defensive game throughout Khabibulin’s tenure in Edmonton.

One of the more telling stats of any goalie is his performance on the penalty kill. So far this season, the Oilers have been short-handed 30 times with Khabibulin in the crease, and it wasn’t until the most recent penalty kill that the opposing team scored. In total, Khabibulin has stopped 26 of 27 shots while short-handed, good for a .963 situational SV%, which is actually better than his even-strength SV% of .958. Interestingly enough, Dubnyk’s even-strength SV% is a sliver higher (.959), while his short-handed SV% is .846. There’s something to be said for the confidence with which a PK unit plays in front of a hot goaltender, but given the disparity between Khabibulin’s mark and Dubnyk’s — as well as the fact that the veteran’s SH SV% over the two prior seasons was .815 and .846, respectively — this is an area where regression is expected as the season wears along. Then again, only about 20 percent of a goalie’s seasonal stat line will be generated on the penalty kill, so what about the rest of the time?

Here’s where the qualitative part comes in. As anyone who’s watched the “Bulin Wall” in action this season will tell you, it appears that he’s playing with the verve of his vintage self, as if he found the proverbial fountain of youth in the offseason. Moreover, as Ken Baker of NHL.com wrote recently, Khabibulin has been displaying excellent goaltending fundamentals, such as playing confidently at the front of his crease, moving well laterally and tracking the puck so that he positions himself properly. He’s also been a stalwart at controlling rebounds, and this ability is a huge confidence booster for the netminder himself and the defense in front of him. We know how vital an NHL goalie’s confidence is to his continued success.

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Pekka Rinne is one of the NHL’s top goaltenders. Now, he’ll be paid accordingly.

The Nashville Predators signed Rinne, who would’ve been an unrestricted free agent after the season, to a seven-year, $49 million extension, the team announced Thursday. No goalie in the league currently carries a $7 million salary cap hit—the Rangers’ Henrik Lundqvist comes closest, at $6.875 million, according to CapGeek.com.

Pekka Rinne will carry the largest salary-cap hit among NHL goaltenders. (AP Photo)
With Rinne in the fold long term, the Predators now can focus fully on negotiating deals with captain Shea Weber, who signed a one-year deal in the offseason, and Ryan Suter, though whether they actually hold on to the defensemen is far from a sure thing.

Weber, one of the NHL’s elite players, will again be a restricted free agent in the offseason. The sides had attempted to sign a long-term deal but failed, leading to Weber’s record $7.5 million award. Suter, meanwhile, can be an unrestricted free agent and in line for a significant raise on his $3.5 million salary.

“Today’s signing is further evidence of our ownership’s commitment to keeping our core intact,” GM David Poile said in a team release. “This is the first step of a process designed to retain our key players and leaders. Pekka has grown with our franchise, just recently established our franchise record for career shutouts and is now recognized as one of the game’s elite players. We’re thrilled to know that he will be backstopping our franchise for several years to come.”

Nashville, coming off the first playoff series win in franchise history, carries a 2011-12 payroll of less than $50 million—about $15 million under the NHL’s salary cap—and is typically one of the league’s lower-spending teams. With Rinne’s salary added to their 2012-13 projections, the Predators have nearly $31 million devoted to 11 players.

As for Rinne, who turned 29 Thursday as well, he was a Vezina trophy finalist after the 2010-11 season (33-22-9, 2.12 GAA, .930 save percentage) and already has two shutouts in 2011-12.

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Nashville, Tenn. (November 3, 2011) – Nashville Predators President of Hockey Operations/General Manager David Poile announced today that the club has signed goaltender Pekka Rinne to a seven-year, $49 million contract – the largest in franchise history.

“Today’s signing is further evidence of our ownership’s commitment to keeping our core intact,” Poile said. “This is the first step of a process designed to retain our key players and leaders. Pekka has grown with our franchise, just recently established our franchise record for career shutouts and is now recognized as one of the game’s elite players. We’re thrilled to know that he will be backstopping our franchise for several years to come.”

Rinne, who is celebrating his 29th birthday today (11/3/82), finished second in voting for the 2011 Vezina Trophy and fourth in voting for the 2011 Hart Trophy, in addition to being named to the 2010-11 NHL Second All-Star Team. Rinne ranked second among NHL netminders in save percentage (.930), third in goals-against average (2.12) and tied for sixth in shutouts (6) in 2010-11, with the save percentage and goals-against average numbers setting franchise records. During the 2011 Playoffs, he led the Predators to their first-ever series victory in the Western Conference Quarterfinals vs. Anaheim, then posted a franchise-record for goals-against average in a series (1.94) along with a .932 save percentage in the Western Conference Semifinals against Vancouver.

Already in 2011-12, the Kempele, Finland native has recorded his 21st and 22nd shutouts, moving into first on the franchise’s all-time list and giving him the most whitewashes in the League since 2008-09. His record-breaking 22nd shutout on Saturday against Anaheim was also his 100th career victory. In becoming the first goalie in club history to start each of the team’s first 11 games of the season, Rinne has risen to first in the NHL in saves (307), second in shots against (333), and third in minutes played (624:37).

Nashville’s 10th choice, 258th overall (eighth round), in the 2004 NHL Entry Draft, Rinne has also represented Finland in two of the past three World Championships (2009, 2010), being named one of the nation’s three best players in both years.

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If I asked you who the best goaltending duo in the NHL was, what would your answer be?

Would it be Roberto Luongo and Cory Schneider in Vancouver? Perhaps it’s Tim Thomas and Tuukka Rask in Boston. How about Martin Brodeur and the resurging Johan Hedberg in New Jersey?

All of those are good guesses, but through the first month of the 2011-2012 season, the best goaltending has come from Edmonton.

That’s right, the Edmonton Oilers. The team that finished tied for 28th in goals allowed last season and had their top goaltender, Nikolai Khabibulin, spend time in jail and on house arrest over the summer due to his impaired driving charges.

The play of Khabibulin and Devan Dubnyk is by far biggest surprise of the young NHL season so far, even more surprising than the Oilers’ 7-2-2 start.

After all, you could have guessed this young Oilers squad would have a lot of energy early on and might show signs of improvement. It added Ryan Smyth and drafted Ryan Nugent-Hopkins in the offseason and its other young forwards like Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle are a year older and should be a year better.

There were signs that the offense would be there, but nothing to suggest the defence and especially the goaltending would be this good. The play of Khabibulin was the weakest of many weak links for the Oilers last season. He had the most losses of any NHL goaltender in just 47 games and he also posted an ugly 3.40 goals against average, which was the worst among goalies that played more than 30 games.

However, this season both Khabibulin and Dubnyk have goals against averages of less than 2.00 through the month of October and Khabibulin has amazingly stopped 96 percent of the shots he’s faced.

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