Hurricanes ‘rolled the dice’ on goalies. Are they better off this year than last?
The Carolina Hurricanes began the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs with two veteran goalies and a rookie.
The Canes will begin the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs with two veteran goalies and a rookie.
The difference: None of the goalies is the same. And the Canes believe this year’s threesome — Frederik Andersen, Antti Raanta and rookie Pyotr Kochetkov — gives them a better chance of winning the Stanley Cup, even if Andersen misses the start of the playoffs with an injury.
Don Waddell, the Canes president and general manager, faced considerable backlash after last season when he let Petr Mrazek and James Reimer leave in free agency and traded rookie Alex Nedeljkovic to Detroit. Mrazek, a fiery type, had been a part of three consecutive playoff teams and Nedeljkovic was a finalist for the 2021 Calder Trophy as NHL rookie of the year.
“I was probably the most unpopular guy in the community when we got rid of our goalies,” Waddell said at a Friday news conference.
Even Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour might have had a few less-than-kind words for his boss.
“But we did all right, right?” Brind’Amour said Friday.
Andersen and Raanta combined to win the 2022 William M. Jennings Memorial Trophy presented annually to the goaltenders who played at least 25 games for the team that allowed the fewest goals in the regular season.
It’s a team award, in a sense. The Canes allowed a league-low 202 goals this season. But the trophy goes to Andersen and Raanta, the first goalies in franchise history to earn it.
“We rolled the dice on the goaltenders and I think it worked out pretty well,” Waddell said. “We’ve had solid goaltending all season.”
The Hurricanes did some crowing about it Friday on social media. The team’s Twitter account noted a story by theScore, a sports website, from last year that said the signing of Andersen and Raanta carried too much risk, in that both had been injury-prone in their careers and were “years removed from their best work.”
Tweeted the Canes: “People don’t forget.”
But Andersen’s injury is still worrisome. The Denmark native, who has won 35 games and has a 2.17 goals-against average, left the April 16 game at Colorado and the Vezina Trophy candidate has not seen competition since.
“We’re focused on what we can control,” Waddell said Friday. “Rod has said Freddie is doing everything that we’ve asked him to do and more. He’s working out daily. He hasn’t been on the ice yet, so there’s no timetable until he gets on the ice.
“But we’re very confident in the other guys who are here that they can provide us what we need. We’ll just see how things roll, and see Freddie whenever he takes the ice, and go from there.”
Raanta should start Game 1 of the opening-round series. Brind’Amour said Andersen would not play until going through a practice — one was scheduled Saturday morning at PNC Arena.
“If he’s ready to go, that’s on the table for sure,” Brind’Amour said of Andersen.
Andersen has been in 53 career playoff games, helping the Anaheim Ducks reach the Western Conference final in 2015. His 25 playoff games with the Toronto Maple Leafs were spread over four seasons and included three first-round losses, once to Washington and twice to Boston.
Raanta has five games of playoff experience with the Rangers and Coyotes. Kochetkov, 22, has roughly two and half games of NHL experience since his emergency callup from Chicago of the AHL, albeit all three wins.
Nedeljkovic was the starter when the Canes opened the 2021 playoffs against the Nashville Predators, getting a shutout in Game 2. He started all six games in the opening-round series as Carolina won 4-2. Canes fans were chanting his name.
Then came Tampa Bay.
A soft goal allowed by Nedeljkovic was demoralizing in a 2-1 loss in Game 1, and the Lightning took the series in five games. Nedeljkovic played nine of the 11 playoff games last year, finishing with a 2.17 GAA, and Mrazek played in two.
An X-factor for the Canes this year might be Kochetkov, especially if Raanta has a flareup of the lower-body injury — he called it a “little tweak” — that forced him out of the April 24 game against the New York Islanders. There is no “book” on Kochetkov, who came to Chicago from the KHL, other than his 15 games with the Wolves and his three wins for the Canes, when he faced 61 shots and allowed six goals.
“He looks like he’s been with us all year,” Raanta said Thursday. “You could see he has that fire in him and that battle level when the game starts. You can see his confidence is really high.”
This story was originally published April 30, 2022 at 12:41 PM.
