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NASHVILLE [url=http://www.officialhockeypanthersshop.com/authentic-adidas-jonathan-huberdeau-jersey]Jonathan Huberdeau Jersey[/url] , Tenn. (AP) — Pekka Rinne continued his dominance over Tampa Bay and tied a record with one of his boyhood heroes in the process.Ryan Johansen had a goal and an assist, Rinne stopped 29 shots, and the Nashville Predators beat the Lightning 3-2 on Monday night.It was Rinne’s 319th victory, tying him with Miikka Kiprusoff for most NHL wins by a Finnish-born goaltender.“For sure it’s a cool thing,” he said. “Kiprusoff is one of my heroes for sure. I got to play against him and things like that, but when I was a teenager growing up, I looked up to him. To me, he’s the greatest Finnish goalie. It’s pretty cool that I’m tied with him.”Rinne improved to 9-0-1 in his career against the Lightning. His best save came on Brayden Point’s breakaway in the first period. He also denied J.T. Miller and Victor Hedman in an 11-second span late in the second after the Predators were hemmed in their zone for a prolonged period of time following an icing.Kyle Turris and Filip Forsberg also scored for Nashville, which has won two straight.“We know that they’re one of the top teams in the league, and it ended up being a good game, a good matchup,” Nashville coach Peter Laviolette said.Hedman and Nikita Kucherov had the goals for Tampa Bay, which snapped its two-game winning streak. Louis Domingue finished with 31 saves.Forsberg gave the Predators a 2-1 lead at 6:43 of the second. Skating into the Lightning zone on the right side,Mattias Ekholm left a drop pass for his Swedish countryman just inside the blue line. Forsberg skated to the left faceoff dot and snapped a quick wrist shot high to Domingue’s glove side.“We have to have better starts,” Lightning forward Alex Killorn said. “We haven’t had great starts as of late. If we can do that, it will be a much different game for us.”Johansen made it 3-1 at 10:16 of the second when he tipped Craig Smith’s wrist shot from the right side over Domingue’s stick.“I think for a fan, tonight’s game was awesome,” Johansen said. “They got to see two of the top teams in the league right now going toe to toe. We did a lot of good things. They did good things. Ultimately [url=http://www.officialhockeypanthersshop.com/authentic-adidas-keith-yandle-jersey]Keith Yandle Jersey[/url] , we found a way to get the win done.”Late in the second, Killorn had an apparent goal disallowed as he was sent to the penalty box for tripping Nashville defenseman Ryan Ellis.“They dictated the pace in the first half, and we dictated in the second half,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “We both scored three, one was called back. That was the ultimate difference in the game.”Kucherov pulled the Lightning within one at 3:25 of the third. Point carried the puck in on the right side and found Kucherov skating through the slot, where he made a move on Rinne before beating him with a backhand.Rinne gloved down another attempt by Kucherov all alone in front with 7:31 left in the third to preserve the Nashville lead.In the final seconds of the third, Ekholm pulled a puck off of the goal line after Hedman’s shot hit Rinne and trickled behind the Finnish netminder toward the goal line.Hedman scored the game’s first goal at 5:10 of the opening period. Carrying the puck into the Nashville zone on the left side, Hedman pulled up at the top of the left faceoff circle and ripped a slap shot over Rinne’s glove.Turris tied it with 4:41 left in the first. Tampa Bay killed of 53 seconds of a Predators two-man advantage, but with just 3 seconds remaining in the second penalty, Turris beat Domingue with a slap shot from the right faceoff dot just inside the near post.Turris has goals in back-to-back games.NOTES: Lightning D Erik Cernak picked up the secondary assist on Hedman’s goal, registering his first career NHL point. … Tampa Bay D Ryan McDonagh got his 200th career assist. … Ekholm has 100 career NHL assists. … Nashville D Roman Josi has four assists in his last three games.UP NEXTLightning: Host Florida on Wednesday night.Predators: Host St. Louis on Wednesday night. Behind the mask is a mind filled with a web of a thousand thoughts, worries and a singular focus of what it takes to win a game.Then the next game, then the one after that.”There is no shut-off for a goaltender,” retired goalie Brian Boucher said. ”The mind doesn’t shut off.”A starting NHL goaltender bears a burden unlike any position in hockey and few others in sports, and the resulting pressure builds up over the course of a season. By this time of year, with the playoffs on the horizon, No. 1 goalies have grinded through almost six months of work and are battling fatigue that threatens to derail their team’s hopes.Andrei Vasilevskiy of Tampa Bay is going through it for the first time while Braden Holtby of the Washington Capitals is used to it by now. Goalies of all ages have no choice but to manage the physical and mental hurdles.”It’s one of those things that you’ve got find ways to make sure you’re prepared and ready to play every game,” Holtby said. ”As a goaltender [url=http://www.officialhockeypanthersshop.com/authentic-adidas-nick-bjugstad-jersey]Authentic Nick Bjugstad Jersey[/url] , there’s not much room to take nights off.”It’s worse for the goalies whose teams can’t afford to start a backup. Boucher started the final 13 games for Philadelphia in 2010 to help them make the playoffs, Jonathan Quick started 20 of the final 21 games for the Los Angeles Kings when they tried to make a furious push to make it in 2015 and Kari Lehtonen could be counted on to play the final nine games of the Dallas Stars‘ season now as they claw for a spot.”You’ll go through the whole night thinking about tomorrow, show up to the rink in the morning thinking about tonight and then you show up to the game thinking about the game,” said Boucher, now an analyst for NBC Sports. ”Not until that horn goes off at the very end can you finally go, `Whew,’ and take a deep breath and hopefully it’s in a celebration with your teammates. …. You have a shower, you feel good about things, you go home, you kind of decompress and then the next day it starts again: the butterflies, the nerves, the thinking about your opponent. And that’s the mental fatigue that comes into it.”That’s what Vasilevskiy is dealing with at age 23, 58 starts into his first season as the full-time starter and the league leader in victories.”Tiredness is something that I probably never faced before,” he told The Tampa Bay Times.The same goes for Winnipeg goalie Connor Hellebuyck, who is between the pipes for meaningful games and on the cusp of his first playoff appearance. Jets goaltending coach Wade Flaherty talks to Hellebuyck almost daily about what he needs to be successful, and the staff pays careful attention to making sure the 24-year-old is good to go.Coach Paul Maurice said the Jets are aware of the balance between rhythm and rest but aren’t holding Hellebuyck back.”There’s a fatigue component that a No. 1 goaltender also has to embrace,” Maurice said. ”He has to learn how to play when he doesn’t feel 100 percent right because that’s basically going to be his life.”Winnipeg has been able to give Hellebuyck blocks of two or three days completely off, a rarity for top goalies this time of year. The Nashville Predators have a big enough lead atop the Central Division that they can afford to lighten Pekka Rinne’s workload down the stretch [url=http://www.officialhockeypanthersshop.com/authentic-adidas-vincent-trocheck-jersey]Vincent Trocheck Jersey[/url] , which could be a huge benefit.”I like thinking outside the box,” former goalie Martin Biron said. ”You may have a Friday-Saturday game, have a Tuesday game, have a Thursday game. You can play your starter on Friday-Saturday and not play him on Tuesday so he gets Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday (off) and then he gets ready for the weekend again for the Thursday. There’s a lot more days to be able to decompress and really think about how to reset and re-prepare.”Holtby got a 10-day reset from a month-plus of struggles as Philipp Grubauer started four games in a row. Having a reliable backup is a luxury Washington has – and Holtby doesn’t like taking days off, either. Toronto starter Frederik Andersen recently joked that he’s more tired of being asked if he’s tired than he is from facing the most shots in the league.Practice shots, warmups, travel and mental and physical preparation are also part of the wear and tear. Analyst Justin Goldman of The Goalie Guild said those can be spaced out over weeks and months.”Anything you can do to get a little bit of extra sleep over the course of the season is absolutely monumental when it comes time for the playoff push,” Goldman said.Biron, who started 59 games for Philadelphia in 2007-08 and backed up Henrik Lundqvist when the New York Rangers realized the ”King” needed more time off, figures 60 is the perfect number for a starter. For someone like Vasilevskiy who can’t afford to learn and wait for next year, Boucher said he hopes a more relaxed market like Tampa Bay helps now and the rush of the playoffs gets him through the grind in a few weeks.”I think Vasilevskiy’s going to be fine just because you watch his physical attributes, they’re through the roof,” Boucher said. ”So the physical side doesn’t look like it’s an issue. Now it’s his time to shine.”—