The new coach he mentioned is Mike Babcock, who was Andersen\u2019s coach with the Toronto Maple Leafs from the start of the 2016-17 season through the first 23 games of 2019-20. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Edmonton hired Babcock on June 23 to replace Kris Knoblauch, who was fired May 14 after three seasons as coach.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think my experience with him has been good,\u201d Andersen said. \u201cAs a goalie you don\u2019t really deal with the head coach as much and he kind of leaves you alone with the goalie coach to kind of do your thing. He\u2019s a great coach, great X\u2019s and O\u2019s. I thought he got a lot out of our group.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were a young team then and I\u2019m excited to see what we can do together in this new opportunity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Andersen was in his prime with Babcock in Toronto. He had back-to-back seasons with 66 starts in 2016-17 and 2017-18 and was the undisputed No. 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With the Oilers, Andersen is expected to play in a three-goalie rotation along with Devon Levi<\/a>, who was acquired by Edmonton in a trade with the Buffalo Sabres on July 1, and Tristan Jarry<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think that\u2019s something that\u2019s not going to be a day-to-day thing, but something we\u2019re going to have to manage,\u201d Andersen said. \u201cThe schedule has been very different from what it used to be, and I think the game has changed as well, and it makes it more demanding to play a lot of games and still perform the way you want to.\u201d<\/p>\n Andersen played 35 games in the regular season for Carolina in 2025-26, with Bussi playing 39 and Kochetkov getting into nine games.<\/p>\n The Hurricanes finished with a 53-22-7 record, the best in the Eastern Conference, allowing 2.88 goals against per game, sixth best in the NHL. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Now he comes to a team that has had goaltending issue the past few seasons. The Oilers acquired Jarry in a trade with the Pittsburgh Penguins for Stuart Skinner<\/a> on\u00a0Dec. 12, 2025, with the expectation he was going to be the undisputed starter.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jarry, however lost his No. 1 job to Connor Ingram<\/a> toward the end of the season and only made one start during the playoffs.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Oilers allowed 3.23 goals per game last season, 25th in the NHL.<\/p>\n Enter Andersen, who is 59-37 with a 2.32 goals-against average and .913 save percentage in 101 playoff games.<\/p>\n The 59 wins are third most in the NHL since his first postseason (2013-14), behind only Andrei Vasilevskiy<\/a> (70) and Sergei Bobrovsky<\/a>\u00a0(61).\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHowever it plays out, it\u2019s tough to predict, but I\u2019m ready to support the other guys and play when called upon and I think that\u2019s something we\u2019ll all lean on each other and figure out with Peter (Aubry, goaltending coach) and (Babcock) too,\u201d Andersen said. \u201cThat\u2019s something we\u2019ll have discussions about I\u2019m sure, but we haven\u2019t gotten that far yet.\u201d<\/p>\n One thing is for sure, Andersen no longer will have to face Oilers superstars\u00a0Connor McDavid<\/a> and Leon Draisaitl<\/a>\u00a0for at least one season.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sure they\u2019ve made me and the rest of the League look silly a lot of times before in games and now it\u2019s just going to be in practice,\u201d Andersen said. \u201cIt\u2019s cool to get to see that up close and see how they operate. It\u2019s a cool experience and a cool opportunity to get to play with elite players.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new coach he mentioned is Mike Babcock, who was Andersen\u2019s coach with the Toronto Maple Leafs from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":784723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":["post-785699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-edmonton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}