Carolina Hurricanes Down Two Goalies, Where To Go From Here?

The Hurricanes have once again found themselves in a very precarious position in regard to the team's goaltending.

The Carolina Hurricanes have found themselves in perhaps the worst spot possible just 20 games into their season.

Things had been going pretty good for the Canes — who have defied the critics that had predicted that the team would see a drop off — as they sit third in the entire league for point percentage (0.725) with a 14-5-1 record.

However, with netminders Frederik Andersen undergoing knee surgery on Friday and Pyotr Kochetkov getting knocked out in Saturday night's game, all of a sudden, the net is looking very shaky for Carolina.

So what can the Hurricanes do?

Stand Pat

With Kochetkov's status and timeline still up in the air, we don't really know how long he may be out.

But what is clear is that at least for the time being, Spencer Martin is the starter.

The 29-year-old started the season in the AHL (a 0.920 save percentage across three games), but the injury to Andersen quickly saw him make his way back up to the big leagues.

Martin has had an up and down year so far in Carolina (a 0.870 save percentage in five appearances) from getting left out to the Wolves in Colorado to then shutting out the Ottawa Senators.

But Martin's only win in five appearances was that Ottawa shutout and that's just not a recipe for success.

He's shown he can beat big teams with road wins over Boston and Vegas last year, so perhaps the Canes will be willing to give him just a few more chances to see if he can once again rise to the occasion.

Beyond him though, there's really not many in-house options. as the only other goaltenders Carolina has under contract are 24 year old Yaniv Perets (0.825 save percentage in three AHL starts) and 20 year old Ruslan Khazheyev (0.863 save percentage in five AHL starts).

If Carolina wants to try and wait for Kochetkov and Andersen to get healthy, they may find themselves in a hole too big to climb out of.

Work the Phones

The biggest problem for the Hurricanes is that they don't currently have a lot of cap space and none of their goaltenders have season-ending injuries.

So the usual idea of "Just throw someone on LTIR" doesn't work because when those players are finally healthy, you'd be in a really bad way cap-wise because then you'd have to move someone else and you'd be trading from a position of weakness.

So how much space does Carolina have?

With Jesper Fast's LTIR relief, the Canes are looking at approximately $1.5 million in cap space currently.

They could potentially free up another $1.5 million by reassigning Tyson Jost and Ty Smith to the AHL, but that hinges on everyone else being healthy enough to play.

So the Canes would be shopping in the $1.5 million to $3 million range but you generally aren't finding too much value there. 

There are options out there, like old friend Alex Nedeljkovic in Pittsburgh or perhaps one of Mackenzie Blackwood or Vitek Vanecek in San Jose, but we'll touch more on some of those more realistic options once we know more about Kochetkov's status.

However, what potentially will help if the team does go down this route is that they don't necessarily need a goaltender with only one-year left on their contract because Andersen is on an expiring deal.

There's obviously risk involved with grabbing a guy with multiple years left on their contract, but the Hurricanes are going to have to go that route anyway next year regardless, so might as well get a head start, right?

The Vegas Method

Part of what has made the Vegas Golden Knights so successful is their cutthroat approach to managing their roster.

No matter how meaningful a player was to the team or how much investment they have in them, if it will help the bottom line, they're open to moving them.

And that might be the best course of action for the Hurricanes when it comes to  Frederik Andersen.

Carolina has given the Danish netminder plenty of opportunities to be the guy in Raleigh and he's put up some good numbers, but a never-ending cycle of injuries has prevented Andersen from really establishing himself as a top goaltender.

The Hurricanes can't wait on Andersen to be healthy when the risk of him dealing with something else down the line is so high. At this point, the team knows what he is.

Trading the 35 year old — which isn't as simple as it seems — would however free up an additional $3.4 million in cap space and allow the team to seek out a new tandem partner to play alongside Kochetkov for the foreseeable future.

The move could open up as much as $7 million in cap space if they utilize Fast's LTIR relief space and reassign both Jost and Smith to the AHL.

Not saying the Canes will go this route, but it's certainly an option that would allow GM Eric Tulsky the option to go trophy fishing.