Could Dane be the bane of Blackhawks’ hopes to reign?
ANAHEIM— In explaining the cultural stature of hockey in his native Denmark, Anaheim Ducks goaltender Frederik Andersen used his current place of employment as a reference point.
If an NHLer walks down the street here in Southern California, as in Andersen’s home-country capital of Copenhagen, the vast majority of people don’t recognize him. In both places there exists only a hardcore legion of fanatics who ever do.
“So,” Andersen said, “that’s perfect.”
But don’t take Andersen’s celebration of his relative anonymity as a sign that he is averse to the klieg lights of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Andersen’s native land may be an international minnow, but in the wake of his brilliant Game 1 in the Western Conference final — wherein he stopped 32 Chicago shots in a 4-1 Anaheim win — he is looking like anything but a fish out of water in the world’s best league.
While his relative lack of NHL experience has been cited as a possible liability, it certainly hasn’t appeared to hurt the Ducks to date. Though Andersen has logged just 82 regular-season NHL games — and though this is just his second spring in the post-season — his results have been more than impressive. In nine career playoff outings at the Honda Center, where the Ducks will play host to the Blackhawks for Tuesday’s Game 2, he has yet to lose.
That’s the longest home playoff win streak to begin an NHL goaltending career, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. It’s also the longest home win streak by any NHL netminder since Jonathan Quick won nine straight at Staples Center during a hot streak that spanned the 2012 and 2013 postseasons. So, even if Andersen hasn’t been inducing the throngs in Copenhagen to tune in during the wee hours — the Danes prefer soccer and cycling, to name just a few sports they typically list as more appealing than hockey — he is accomplishing something special.
“He definitely impressed us in that first game,” Patrick Kane, the Blackhawks all-star, said Monday. “But we’ve gotten to good goaltenders before.”
If Kane’s deadpan statement of fact was intended to intimidate Andersen, it’s unlikely to work. It was some five years ago, when Andersen was a 20-year-old at the world hockey championship, that he first received considerable acclaim for his ability to rise to pressure.
Stefan Ladhe, a Swede who was working as a goaltending coach for the Danish national team at the time, remembers informing Andersen that he would be starting in Denmark’s opener against Finland. To some international newbies, news of the assignment might have been tremor-inspiring. The Finns, after all, had a starting goaltender named Pekka Rinne, one of the planet’s best netminders.
“I told him he was starting and Freddie just said, ‘Great.’ Like, ‘Of course I’m playing.’ I’ve never seen that before,” said Ladhe.
Neither had Denmark. In a game in which Andersen stopped 36 of 37 shots, the Danes reeled off a 4-1 victory — still a national high-water mark. So, when Andersen said after Game 1 of this Western final that “everyone in this room knows we can beat (the Blackhawks),” it wasn’t some new-found schtick.
“That’s how I play,” Andersen said of his assuredness. “In this room we don’t pay attention to the other team. We respect that they have good players. But we also don’t want to give them too much respect, because we know we’re a really good team in here.”
Said Anaheim coach Bruce Boudreau: “What do you expect him to say, ‘Oh, I don’t know, I think they’re too good. We’re not going to win.’? I don’t think that’s going to elicit a lot of confidence in the teammates in front of him. So he says that. And I’m sure he believes it. Because we believe . . . We have to believe things before they happen. If you don’t believe you’re going to succeed, when do you succeed? You don’t.”
There were those who had their doubts in Andersen when the Ducks made him a third-round pick in the 2012 draft — at least partly because he arrived in North America carrying an estimated 246 pounds on his 6-foot-3 frame. Ladhe said Andersen may or may not have been guilty of over-enjoying video games while eating “sweets on the sofa.”
“When he didn’t have very many clothes on, he didn’t look like a professional hockey player,” Ladhe said. “But he’s better now.”
The redhead, now listed at 236 pounds, said he’s gotten better, too, at controlling his temper — the product of being a self-described “sore loser.” That he has developed his talents for a franchise that never seems short on goaltending probably explains his prompt discovery of self discipline. The past couple of seasons have seen him battle the likes of John Gibson and Jonas Hiller for playing time. He has emerged, both last season and this season, as the post-season No. 1.
“That’s one of those things that brings out the best in me. When I get pushed like that, or challenged, I think I get better,” Andersen said. “I was surprised getting drafted here because I knew they had good goaltending. But once they picked me, I was sure I wanted to (do) the best I could to make the team.”
Said Trent Yawney, the Ducks assistant coach who coached Andersen in the minors: “No one’s casted a magic wand on him and said, ‘Hey, you’re going to be this.’ He’s earned it. He’s worked his ass off.”
How did he come to love hockey? Soccer is by far the most popular sport in Denmark. As Ladhe was saying this week, “badminton is a bigger sport in Denmark than hockey.”
But hockey has well-established roots in Andersen’s hometown of Herning, about a three-hour drive West of Copenhagen. There’ve been 10 Danish-born NHL players, according to hockey-reference.com. Four of them hail from Herning, as does Andersen’s father, Ernst, who, like his son, kept goal for the Danish national team.
“Every Danish player over here in the NHL is proud of being from Denmark and kind of showing the world that Danish hockey has produced some good players,” Andersen said. “Yeah, I take pretty good pride in that.”
There’s pride in being a big one from a small pond, for sure. Whether or not he’s the shark who’ll swallow Chicago’s hopes at a third Cup in six years — that’s another kettle of fish enitrely, and one worth keeping an eye on.