Finally, Frederik Andersen was where he was supposed to be as Hurricanes grab Game 1

There was no guarantee, some five months ago, when he was shut down to deal with a frightening and unexpected blood-clotting issue, that Frederik Andersen would be around and available on this particular evening.

The Carolina Hurricanes began the past two postseasons without him, waiting on his eventual (or not) return to the net. The Hurricanes easily might have started a third playoff run without their presumed No. 1 goalie instead of with him. It would hardly have been a shock.

But they didn’t.

It made all the difference.

“We got him for a reason,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “He’s a great goalie. Unfortunately, he’s missed a lot of time. This is what you get him for, though, this time of year.”

On a night when the Hurricanes were mostly outplayed by the New York Islanders, feeling their way into the playoffs after a month of meaningless games but against an opponent that spent that same period of time scrapping for every single point just to get here, Andersen kept the Hurricanes afloat just long enough to find their game and pull away.

His biggest save — a down-and-out, no-stick, no-hope scrambling stop on Noah Dobson after Dobson rang the puck off Andersen’s left post and found the rebound back on his stick — came just before Stefan Noesen’s goal that broke a third-period tie, woke up a dazed crowd and sent the Hurricanes along to a 3-1 victory.

“I got clipped with someone’s skate,” Andersen said. “I just kind of threw the technique book out the window and tried to come up with something.”

Islanders coach Patrick Roy, no casual observer when it comes to goaltending, lamented his team’s failure to finish the chances it created, but he knew who was responsible for that.

“The moment where the goalie tripped on the defenseman’s skate and we have two good shots on net that could have been goals right there and took a 2-1 lead, hey, we came up short,” Roy said.

It was a spectacular sequence, but Andersen has been generally spectacular since his March 7 return, one of the best goalies in the NHL, if not the best. His transition from regular season to postseason was seamless. In that rare game when the Hurricanes were outshot, at home no less, Andersen made sure it didn’t matter, and to the undying appreciation of his teammates.

Most of them.

“That’s what he gets paid to do,” said Evgeny Kuznetsov, cutting directly to the point.

He’s not wrong, though. The Hurricanes have been counting on Andersen to be their No. 1 goalie in all three of his seasons here, which made Andersen’s previous absences due to injury all the more damaging to the Hurricanes’ postseason hopes.

He was still working his way back in 2022 when the Hurricanes exited in the second round against the New York Rangers. And he made his debut last year with a win in the sixth and final game of the first-round series against these same Islanders, after the Hurricanes let that series linger just a hair too long for their own good, starting all but one game the rest of the way.

So for the first time in his Hurricanes career, Andersen was where he was supposed to be on the first night of the playoffs: In net, backstopping a win on a night when anything less than excellence would have been disastrous.

For two periods, the Islanders generated offense, far better than the Hurricanes other than Kuznetsov’s second-minute wonder goal, sneaking the puck into a narrow space over Semyon Varlamov’s left shoulder from a tight angle, scoring a power-play goal before he’d even taken an even-strength shift.

And after giving up a first-period goal when Andersen lost sight of a loose puck and Kyle MacLean — son of current Islanders and former Hurricanes assistant coach John MacLean — got position at the post to tuck it behind Andersen, the big Dane held off the onslaught, making 29 straight saves to close out the win.

It was, perhaps, a difficult scene to envision at various points during the winter, when Andersen’s status and future were submerged in uncertainty. And yet when the time came, everything clicked into place as planned.

“I can’t stress enough how grateful I am to be back,” Andersen said. “It’s fun.”

Under different circumstances, he might not have been there at all. The Hurricanes might be staring at an early deficit in the aftermath of this one. They’re 8-1 in series when they win Game 1 at PNC Arena. It matters.

But Andersen was right where he was supposed to be. And after one playoff game, the first the Hurricanes hope of many in 2024, so are they.

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