Carolina Hurricanes: Seemingly Incurable Raging Goalie Fever

The Hurricanes are 16-10-1 on the season, yet there is one area of the team that has been significantly underwhelming.

Deja vu? Question marks surrounding the Carolina Hurricanes goaltending, stop me if you’ve heard this before! It’s the same story in a different year. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that Petr Mrazek  may not be a number one goalie. When Carolina signed him to that contract extension on July 2nd, could there was still a better option they could have gone for?

I know a lot of readers really like Petr Mrazek for the way he played down the stretch last year in tandem with Curtis McElhinney that saw the Hurricanes clinch their first playoff berth in a decade. The story is well known by hurricanes fans around the globe. But rewarding Mrazek for playing like that in one year has already started to show signs of possible backfiring.

Do not get me wrong, I do not place the blame solely at the feet of Petr Mrazek, far from it. It hasn’t been good enough from James Reimer either. Reimer has to take some of the blame for this as well. He’s not been good enough, although he’s been the better goalie as of late.

That kind of tells you everything you need to know about the goaltending.. The guy we got back in a slight cap dump has been better than our starter in recent games. This could change. But what if it does? What could the team do to fix their current issues?

First of all, there’s always the call up route. It worked for St Louis with Jordan Binnington last year. Give Alexander Nedeljkovic a shot at the job. He was deemed the best goalie in the AHL last year, sitting in the AHL now may just stunt his development.

He has been up and down over the Checkers season. Getting him NHL ice time may be the best way forward. He won his first career start against Vancouver last year, perhaps he is more than NHL ready.

There’s always the trade route. Goalies on rebuilding teams may be worth taking a look at. Some of the names that spring to mind are Anders Nilsson and Robin Lehner.

There are obviously other alternatives, maybe a team like Detroit will cough up Jimmy Howard when asked, although the idea of a Mrazek-Howard tandem sounds like we’re chasing the ambitions of the Red Wings playoff streak. Lets be honest, that doesn’t look appealing right now with the way the Red Wings are playing.

Alternatively, you could go for a BIG goalie and just pay a ransom. Anaheim are rebuilding, for example. It’s going to cost a small island, but maybe there’s a deal to be worked out for John Gibson. Arizona have two great goalies in Darcy Kuemper and Antti Raanta. Again it won’t come cheap, but for any of these young elite goalies, it’s surely worth it from a Canes perspective.

The biggest issue with any of these moves is the cap space needed.

Or according to Mike Maniscalco here, you could just strap some pads onto Jaccob Slavin and see where it leads because he sure seems to always find himself in the right place to pull the puck off the goal line.

Whatever your point of view on this situation, we can all agree that the Canes goaltending has been way too up and down, this is not good enough from the current tandem. Reimer has been the better of the goalies recently, but we know what Mrazek can do. It’s so infuriating from a team that is consistently inconsistent between the pipes.

Question for Cardiac Cane readers: What do you think the Canes should do with their goaltending issues?