-Gabriel Dorris-

The 2024-25 season, despite downgrades across the lineup, will still be a huge season for the Canes’ future, as many young players will be given the task of showing their potential or proving their true capability. One of these players is goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov, who seems poised to get his first true shot at a season as the Hurricane’s starter.

Last season, despite a very rough start, Kochetkov was given opportunity by a blood-clotting issue attacking Frederick Andersen and a very poor season from backup Antti Raanta. He ended up turning his season around, putting up some of the best stats of any goalie in the league after mid-December and setting career highs in games played, goals against average, and save percentage.

Assuming Kochetkov does take the reins as starter (at least at first), Frederick Andersen will back him up after putting up an incredible stretch of games to end last year’s regular season before a forgettable playoff run. Spencer Martin will be the third goalie and will likely spend most of the season in the AHL. In the unfortunate circumstance where a fourth goalie is needed, rookies Ruslan Khazheyev and Yaniv Perets will fight for the spot.

Overall, this gives the Canes what is on paper a solid but not top-of-the-league group of goalies. Still, all of this hinges on the performance of Pyotr Kochetkov, and whether he puts up mediocre numbers or solidifies himself as the Canes’ elite starter of the future (and present).

The best case scenario would be replicating what New York Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin did in his age 25 season (2020-21) after putting up very similar numbers to Kochetkov at 24 (.916 SV% in 35 GP for Igor vs .911 SV% in 42 GP for Pyotr). In 2021-22, Shesterkin put up a .935 SV% in 53 games, winning himself the Vezina and solidifying himself as one of the league’s best goalies.

Doing what Shesterkin did isn’t the expectation for Kochetkov, but with the flashes of truly elite play he showed in the second half of last season and the first half of the 2022-23 season, him putting up a .920 or better isn’t out of the realm of probability. For the Canes, it would finally end the rotating carousel of goalies that we’ve seen since Cam Ward retired.