NEW YORK — The building was empty Monday morning save a few workers wandering among Madison Square Garden’s massive seating bowl. The majority of the Carolina Hurricanes were still back at their hotel. Frederik Andersen had the ice and the arena almost to himself.
This has been his playoffs so far, these early solo skates with goaltending coach Paul Schonfelder. Sometimes he’s out there with the scratches and other injured players. On this morning, it was just him and Schonfelder and the swish of his pads through the chopped-up ice in his crease and the crackle of pucks ricocheting around the corners.
Forty-five minutes later, when the full team took the ice for a rare road practice in the playoffs — the Hurricanes’ first under Rod Brind’Amour without multiple off days, and read into that what you will given the way things have gone away from home — Andersen was out there with them for the first time since the knee injury he suffered more than a month ago. He left after 20 minutes, enough for his teammates to get a good look at him — “I don’t think I scored once on him today,” Sebastian Aho said — but not enough for Brind’Amour to pass any judgment on his status.
“He was on the ice, that’s good,” the Hurricanes coach said. “He didn’t really get into too much. It was nice to see him moving along. I’ll tell you when he’s an option, how about that?”
It has been a slow recovery for Andersen, longer for a goaltender than it would be for another player with the same injury because of the specific movements of the position. But Andersen is able to do all of that now, side to side, up and down, in and out of the butterfly stance. By all appearances Monday morning, he was more than ready to rejoin practice, although the only person whose opinion truly matters is Andersen.
The same will be true of his return to availability, and there really is no rush.
Because of the way Antti Raanta has seized this opportunity after playing second chair to Andersen during the regular season, at this point Andersen can take as long as he wants. That may be difficult for people on the outside to understand — there were some bizarre postulations about the dire impact of Andersen’s injury on Hurricanes’ playoff chances — but it was never an issue on the inside.
“He’s been great for the whole year,” Aho said. “Freddie played a little bit more than him in the regular season, and maybe Freddie got more attention, but every time (Raanta) was in, he was great.”
The Hurricanes have already dodged one bullet, with rookie Pyotr Kochetkov stepping in for Raanta to close out a win in the second game of the Boston series, after David Pastrnak ran into Raanta and knocked him out of that game. That was always the nightmare scenario: Bad luck and bad teams are a big reason why Raanta has waited this long for his opportunity in the playoffs, but his own durability has been the biggest issue over the course of his career. The Hurricanes needed him to bounce back quickly, and he did, missing Game 3 of that series but back in the net for Game 4.
In an ironic sense, though, Andersen’s injury and his prolonged recovery may not have been the worst thing for the Hurricanes. From the moment last summer when the Hurricanes decided to go in a different direction in net with the two free agents, there was always a yin and yang between Andersen and Raanta — Andersen the durable, steady one, Raanta with the higher upside and better career numbers ... when healthy.
Andersen was always the goalie who, over an 82-game season, could put them into the best possible postseason position, and he did, earning some Vezina Trophy consideration along the way. But Raanta might be the better option over a 16-win season, better at his best, and without Andersen’s checkered playoff record. (As always, how much of that is on him and how much is on the Toronto Maple Leafs, who were no better without him than with him, is an open debate.)
Brind’Amour has never been shy about using multiple goalies in the playoffs, and if Andersen becomes available it wouldn’t be a surprise in the least to see him get a shot at some point. When that might be remains as uncertain as ever. The Hurricanes plunge ahead in the playoffs, looking to take control of this series with a win in Game 4 on Tuesday. Andersen’s postponed postseason continues on its own trajectory.
