The Carolina Hurricanes have signed goaltender Petr Mrazek to a one-year contract worth $1.5 million.

The Hurricanes get: a talented goaltender who has seen his confidence and career slowly erode over the last two seasons. Whether or not Mrazek can rebound from this behind a team with a lot of potential as the No.1B goalie remains to be seen. Complicating things is the fact that the No.1A guy – Scott Darling – is coming off a horrific season and yet he’s overpaid at $4.15 million per season for another three years yet. The door is open for Mrazek to steal the starting job…but at the same time, that door could also open up into a goalie abyss that the team could fall into, never to escape.

Fantasy Players impacted: Darling started his first season as a de facto No.1 goalie with a whimper…and he ended it the same way. He had three wins in his first nine starts with Carolina and three wins in his last 12 starts. In between was equally dire. So Carolina’s solution to that was to sign Mrazek, who had three wins in his first 12 games…and three wins in his last 14 games. Ouch. It’s a good thing this team has a great looking group of forwards and defensemen who are on the rise, but without reliable goaltending they can’t play to their potential. If you’re worried about your goalie not making a save, you don’t charge up the ice as early. You hang back a little more, take fewer risks. The roster as a whole would do much better if the goaltending plays to potential rather than what we saw in 2017-18.

That being said, there aren’t many teams that have a starting goaltending job that could be stolen, or 40 starts up for grabs. Mrazek signed with one of them, so this is probably best-case for Mrazek owners. And the pressure is on for Scott Darling owners – though admittedly that pressure would still be there regardless of which goalie signed.

Fantasy Players this helps, in order:

1. Petr Mrazek

Fantasy Players this hurts, in order:

1. Scott Darling