Andersen battled through a tough stretch, making crucial saves early to secure a long-awaited victory and regain his confidence.
It's been a long time coming, but Frederik Andersen can finally breath easy after a game for the first time in literally months.
Andersen helped backstop the Carolina Hurricanes to a 5-2 win over the Anaheim Ducks Thursday night, stopping 11 shots in the victory.
It certainly wasn't a busy work load for Andersen, but he was active early, stopping a Mikael Granlund shorthanded breakaway and facing down a 5-on-3 power play all in the first 10 minutes of game time.
Andersen played his best in that first period where the Canes didn't have a ton of juice and that allowed them to then find their game in the second period and beyond.
"The start, like the game goes different if those chances go in," said Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour. "That's probably the game right there. It turns and then it's an uphill battle. So good for him. Like, he needed to get a win and just now he can maybe relax a little bit and hopefully build on that."
The win snapped a nine-game losing streak for the Danish netminder, the longest such stretch of his career, as his last win came two months earlier on Nov. 6.
Over that two month span, the veteran struggled against a combination of poor play from the team in front of him, terrible luck and tough play.
"You're never perfect," Andersen said. "Sometimes things don't go your way. You just have to keep with it, keep turning rocks over and finding ways to get better and clean up as much as you can and obviously just believe in yourself that you can eventually turn it around. It was a great team effort overall today."
Even when things weren't going well for him, the veteran never lost faith in his game.
Andersen has long held firm in his confidence in his play and believed that things would turn around for him and that's admirable considering how rough the stretch had gotten.
But even beyond him, the team and the organization held their belief in him as well.
"He's a great goalie and we know what he's capable of doing," said defenseman Jalen Chatfield. "We're gonna see him get hot. He's great in practice, so we knew he was gonna put it together and he played great tonight. He's going to keep building off of that."
"That was awesome," Jankowski said on Andersen's performance. "Former team for him and he played unbelievable. A big 5-on-3 there early in the game and he stood on his head and when we made our mistakes, he was there to bail us out. We know what kind of competitor he is back there and it was great to see that."
But now finally back in the win column, hopefully he can get his season back on track because the team's going to need him with still half a season to go.
"I've felt good lately," Andersen said. "Trying to build on it. Just because you feel good doesn't mean you're going to win, but you're going to continue to work for it and do what you believe in your game plan and keep believing that you're going to get rewarded more often than not."
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