Unmasked: Ducks goalie Andersen covers his bases

Anaheim Ducks goalie Frederik Andersen is a baseball fan, which may seem odd for someone from a country that produced its only major league ballplayer in 1911.

Then again, Andersen is the only NHL goalie from Denmark, so it may be fitting that one of the things he likes about baseball is how it can make him a better goaltender. His work with a California strength coach led him to a hitting coach and some baseball-inspired drills to train his vision.

"It's something I picked up from baseball and it made a big difference," Andersen said. "We do baseball drills -- not batting practice, but I'd like to -- and it's similar. As soon as you see the ball you have to make a decision or react to it."

Frederik Andersen

Goalie - ANA

RECORD: 28-7-5
GAA: 2.31 | SVP: .917

"They looked at the ball and the logo was smeared," Andersen said. "That's how good his vision was. That is amazing, something to strive for. If you can pick up that detail that fast I think you've got a good shot at stopping a puck."

When it comes to stopping pucks, Andersen is leaving nothing to chance.

If there's an edge the 25-year-old can find on his path to remaining a No. 1 goalie, he will act on it. In two and a half seasons since coming from Denmark, that has included changing how he trains his eyes, his body, and especially his mind.

"The mental side is something we've worked on since Day One," Ducks goalie coach Dwayne Roloson said. "Obviously we're fine-tuning his game too, but the No. 1 thing was the mental side. He got a taste of battling through tough situations in the [Stanley Cup Playoffs], we figured out where he was having issues, and our staff sport psychologist has worked with him just to stay in the now all the time."

"Staying in the moment" may sound like a cliché, but Andersen sees it's as a skill he can improve on and off the ice.

"Your brain should work like a muscle, and you can train it. Same with your eyes; it doesn't all come naturally," he said. "You want to find all those small edges. Nowadays it's so small the difference in feeling good or not. If you can refocus in the middle of a period after you let in a goal it can turn a whole game around."

In his second season, Andersen is second in the NHL with 28 wins (Pekka Rinne of the Nashville Predators has 29). Though some of that comes from playing behind a good team -- Andersen's .917 save percentage is 17th in the League -- he's had a historical start to his career, matching Bill Durnan's 1948 record with 48 wins in his first 65 NHL games.

Staying level amid the peaks and valleys of that start is something Andersen works hard on. Neither Roloson nor Andersen wanted to get into specifics about the mental game techniques they use, though the goalie said it "was a lot of talk."

"We see how it works in practice and then we use it in a game," Roloson said.

It's certainly not the only thing Andersen has worked on, though in the case of his fitness, "worked off" may be a better description. Andersen dropped 20 pounds from his 6-foot-4 frame, from a high of 255 pounds to 235, and he did it while adding muscle and reducing his body fat by one-third.

Andersen recognized during his first rookie camp that he needed to improve his conditioning. So instead of getting on a return flight to Denmark, he spent the rest of the summer in Anaheim working with Roloson's former coach, Scott Prohaska, a nationally recognized strength consultant based in Newport Beach, Calif.

"It was an investment in myself," Andersen said, "and it paid off."

Andersen now spends summers training in California, and it has given him more power on his already smooth lateral movements, especially from the knees.

Andersen was already blessed with a fairly tight technical game and modern post-integration techniques from his time in Denmark and Sweden, which included attending a camp run by Colorado Avalanche goaltending coach Francois Allaire when he was 14. The improved fitness and increased strength has added a level of controlled, efficient power that compares well to Montreal Canadiens goalie Carey Price, someone Andersen modeled his game after.

"It's the same kind of style Carey Price plays in that calm fashion," said Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf, who won a gold medal with Price for Canada at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. "[Frederik is] not a goalie that flops around and makes an adventure out of things. He's a good positional goalie that calms things down, and that's really big for our group."

Like Price, the leg strength allows Andersen to get atop his crease when the play permits it and still cover off the extra space laterally and back to his posts. And like Price, when Andersen is at his best he is moving around his crease and onto and off of those posts with the casual smoothness of a how-to DVD. He stays ahead of the play and in position to use his big frame but is able to flash the athletic saves he learned from his dad, a former pro goalie.

"When he is moving efficiently and no wasted movements, he is bang on," Roloson said. "He's so strong and his lateral movement is great."

Andersen even handles the puck like Price, cutting down his stick and holding his top hand over a triangular tape job at the end to better control pucks in his feet.

The only thing left is gaining experience, and the Ducks seem determined to give it to him, including 20 straight starts through mid-December. There are ups and downs as Andersen, who is on pace to play 67 games, learns to balance managing his game in practice and the need for rest between starts.

Roloson has to kick him off the ice at times, and with less practice time they rely more on video to find and fix problems. After experiencing the added stress of playing every second night for the first time in last year's playoffs, Andersen said he believes everything he's learned will pay off when this postseason starts.

"It's more mental," he said. "You have to get your mindset up for a game every second night and you've got to get back down again. That's the tough part too. After a game you have all this adrenaline and you need to get back to sleep as soon as possible. We have mental exercises to try to calm down a little quicker, to get your mind from going 100 mph back to a normal pace again."

Like learning to read the logo on a 100 mph fastball, Andersen is eager to try anything that will make him a better goaltender.

"All you can do is present it to them, lead them to it, and if they take it, they take it." Roloson said. "He has taken everything and taken it to the next level."