Frederik Andersen

Frederik Andersen is the most accomplished goaltender Denmark has ever produced — and his path there was anything but straight. Born October 2, 1989, in Herning, he was drafted into the NHL not once but twice. The Carolina Hurricanes took him in the seventh round (187th overall) in 2010, but with Cam Ward entrenched as Carolina’s long-term starter the path to a number-one job looked blocked, and rather than sign he went back into the pool. Two years later the Anaheim Ducks selected him in the third round (87th overall) of the 2012 Draft — the rare goaltender whose career was built on a second chance.

Andersen broke in with Anaheim, and it was there he first put his name on a trophy. He shared the 2015–16 William M. Jennings Trophy — awarded to the goaltenders on the team that allows the fewest goals — with John Gibson, backstopping the Ducks to a league-low 192 goals against while going 22–9–7 with a 2.30 goals-against average and .919 save percentage.

On June 20, 2016, the Toronto Maple Leafs acquired him from Anaheim — sending the 30th overall pick that summer plus a 2017 second-rounder — and signed him to a five-year extension to be their starter. Over five seasons in Toronto he was the Leafs’ workhorse in net before reaching free agency.

Then his story came full circle. In July 2021, Andersen signed with the Carolina Hurricanes — the franchise that had drafted him a decade earlier — and delivered some of the best hockey of his career. In 2021–22 he won a second Jennings Trophy, shared with Antti Raanta, as Carolina allowed a league-low 202 goals; it was the first Jennings in franchise history and made Andersen just the eighth goaltender ever to win the award with two different teams. He was also named to the 2022 NHL All-Star Game.

The milestones kept coming. On January 20, 2025, Andersen became the first Danish-born goaltender to play 500 NHL games, and three nights later he recorded his 300th career win — reaching the mark in 501 games, the second-fastest any goaltender has ever gotten to 300, behind only Andrei Vasilevskiy.

And in 2026, the perseverance paid off in full: Andersen and the Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup. A knee injury in Game 3 of the Cup Final handed the crease to Brandon Bussi, who closed it out — but after a journey that began with a draft pick that never signed, Frederik Andersen finished it as a champion.

Andersen’s game was built on relentless curiosity. He grew up around the rink in Denmark — his father played in goal — one of several goaltenders in the family — had him on skates as soon as he could walk, and let him sit on his pads in the locker room — and his first real work with an experienced goalie coach came at a François Allaire camp in Sweden when he was around 15. In Toronto he found a kindred problem-solver in goalie coach Steve Briere, and together they reworked his post play and save selection, training him to feel as comfortable in scrambled, imperfect situations as in his preferred ones so that opposing scouts could never quite predict him. He has hunted an edge wherever he could find one: studying breathing and stress-control methods — including a visit to observe Navy SEALs, and ice-bath work to practice regaining composure under pressure — and, dating back to his Anaheim years, stepping into the Anaheim Angels’ batting cages with off-season trainer Scott Prochaska to work on visual drills like reading the spin of a pitched ball, all to sharpen how quickly he picks up a shooter’s release.

That same eye has made him a resource for the goaltenders who followed him out of Denmark: fellow Dane Mads Søgaard credited a piece of Andersen’s advice — stay contained, let the game come to you — during a World Junior breakout.

He is also one of InGoal Magazine’s most generous teachers. Andersen was among the very first NHL goalies to sit down for our Pro Reads video breakdowns and has done more than a dozen since, and his mental-game philosophy — that if you can only perform when circumstances are perfect, you won’t make it far as a goalie — anchors our feature Stop Chasing Perfect.