I WANT to trust our coaching staff and management for making this decision, but this, in the best case, is a gamble. In the worst case, it's a bad trade and a worse signing.
Say all you want about goalie assessment and his 6'4 size and his raw skills, but there just isn't enough sample size to make decisions like that. He's played all but 125 NHL games and that's a very small sample size to hand him the $25M contract. It's even scarier to hear from Lou why they gave him the contract "It's extremely important that he knows that we feel he's our #1 goaltender." This is, almost word by word, the same thing JFJ said when he handed Raycroft the big contract, and then a year later Vesa. It's one thing to give up asset and trade for a goalie you believe can be a quality starter in the league, it's another to give him the contract before he's done anything to prove he's a quality starter. And you just CAN'T make that conclusion from 125 NHL games (and 114 starts)
(Now at least Andersen has shown more promise than Vesa when he got that contract, but that really isn't saying much.)
Which is not to say Andersen is not a good goalie. He actually has a lot going for him in his young NHL career. He's got off to a pretty good start, he's got the size, he's had a good playoff, and he's still young-ish. Still, it doesn't mean he can make it, and it's almost like we SO want him to be that #1, we decided to give up trade asset and contract for a #1 and hopefully he can play up to that level.
And I really don't understand the rush. Why does it have to be THIS season? We'll have plenty of young guys in our lineup, this will very much be another 'development year' where the place in standing doesn't really matter. We still have Bernier, who's played like an average / average+ goalie in the last few months of last season. In a few months, teams with 2 good goalies will make their goalie available because of expansion draft, it will be a buyer's market. And not like there are teams lining up to compete with us either. Other than Calgary, there really isn't another team looking for a starter. So what if CAL gets Andersen? MAF, Bishop etc. are all pretty decent consolidation prizes in a few months to a year. We're in no rush!
I just hope Andersen turn out to be an awesome goalie so that all these points become moot ... because no matter how I look at it, we simply gave up too much trade asset, too much terms and too much money for a goalie who we SO desperately hope he pans out but is anything but a sure thing.
