LAS VEGAS — Jordan Staal gave Frederik Andersen no warning.
The captain of the Carolina Hurricanes could have first handed off the Stanley Cup to any number of right choices: Forever Cane Jaccob Slavin? Championship-goal-scoring Taylor Hall? Heart-and-soul leader Jordan Martinook? Clutch rescue goalie Brandon Bussi?
Staal instead glided over to a teammate who hadn’t dressed in three games. He was carrying a big grin and a bigger prize.
“I was deer in the headlights. Yeah, I was not really ready for that, but it was a very cool moment,” Andersen said, smiling through four rounds of interviews on Las Vegas’s championship ice Sunday. “That felt good. I’ve always heard people say it's heavier than you think, but it didn’t feel too bad. I mean, it felt good. It felt right.”
For the Conn Smythe winner to reward Andersen, 36, with one of hockey’s greatest honours — the first Cup pass — speaks to Carolina’s appreciation for the collective, for the hardships, for the journey.
Andersen’s has been a whirlwind, whew.
Funny. The Danish netminder was originally drafted by the Hurricanes way back in the seventh round of 2010. He never signed, though, and was selected as a re-entry in 2012 by the Anaheim Ducks, who play down the road from Disneyland.
Thrice with the Ducks and all five seasons with the Maple Leafs, Andersen’s teams made the playoffs. That streak continued when he joined Rod Brind’Amour’s Canes in 2021.
In all, Andersen has started 101 playoff games. Never had he gone so deep or disappeared so quick as he did this June.
The backbone of Carolina’s 12-1 cruise through the Eastern Conference, Andersen entered the Cup Final as a Conn Smythe contender. And lugging a heavy heart. He was trying to play through grief, coping with the sudden loss of friend and agent Claude Lemieux.
Andersen reveals that he suffered a knee injury in Game 2’s win over Vegas, but says that isn’t the reason he gave up four goals in the second period of Game 3 — a performance that got him pulled in favour of backup Bussi.
“Freddie battled. He got a little nicked up, wasn’t 100 per cent. I felt for him, but he got us here, and then Bus took over. This is a team. That’s the thing I love about it — it’s not about one player,” coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “Hockey is a team sport. It’s the ultimate team sport.”
Seth Jarvis believes Andersen deserved to be handed the Cup “probably more than anybody,” considering his work through three-plus rounds.
“That guy grinded his absolute nuts off to be in this position and get us here. So, to see him lift that Cup after everything he's been through,” Jarvis says, “I couldn’t be happier for him.”
While Andersen views the championship as proof of what he’s known for years — how elite the Hurricanes are — sometimes the proof can be hard to handle.
“It’s disbelief, really. I did not expect that. It really beat every emotion I could think of or what I've been feeling. I can’t tell you. It hasn’t really sunk in,” Andersen said in the moment.
“I still got to figure out if I’m dreaming or not.”
Andersen is quick to shower praise on his undrafted partner, who sealed the deal with a three-game win streak and a blank sheet in Game 6.
And a beautiful thing happened after Carolina captured the trophy on enemy ice. All those travelling Caniacs who took over T-Mobile Arena began chanting “Bus-si! Bus-si!” as NHL minions scrambled to set up fireworks between the handshake line and the Cup presentation. Then, organically, the fans’ “Bus-si!” chants morphed into… “Fred-dy! Fred-dy!”
Another acknowledgement for a goaltender who suddenly went from hero to zero availability on the grandest stage.
“I hated it,” Andersen said of not dressing. “I was nervously shaking the whole time in the back and trying to watch.”
As Andersen’s Cup Final began, he thought of his Danish roots. The goalie spoke of his easing star countryman and key off-season acquisition Nikolaj Ehlers into Canes Country and how the forward gave him a “feeling of home” in a dressing room some 6,900 kilometres from Herning, where Andersen grew up.
There was talk of Ehlers’ father, Heinz, the first Dane drafted to the NHL, but one who never made it. Of Lars Eller, the only other Dane to win the Cup — in Vegas, no less, with the 2018 Capitals. And of fellow Herning-born trailblazer Frans Nielsen, who piled 473 points over a 15-year career with the Islanders and Red Wings but was never afforded such post-season triumph.
“If you’re from a small country that never had an NHL player before, you’re thinking this is impossible to make,” Andersen said. “When Frans Nielsen broke through and he got up to play with the Islanders, it was a huge step for Danish hockey and for kids like me that looked up to him. Just seeing him make it broke a little bit of a barrier in terms of us knowing that it could be done.
“Kind of our Gretzky.”
Andersen admits he was already thinking about his Cup day in Denmark as the clock ticked down Sunday.
“Won’t be Disneyland,” he smiled. “But I think we’ll do Legoland.”
The smile fades slightly when the topic turns to Claude and the Lemieux family, who have been in his corner nearly as long as his own family.
“He would be so proud and all that. He’s a competitor. He always wanted the best for me, and his players, and his family. It’s tough to really describe how much he has meant to me, and how cool it is to have my name on that trophy with him,” says Andersen, whose name will soon be engraved on the same trophy as Lemieux’s is four times over on the higher rings.
“I’ll be very proud to see his name there and be able to look down to me.”
