UFA goalie market grows even smaller on Saturday.

Teams in the National Hockey League that were hoping to bolster their goaltending through free agency this summer may be in for a rude awakening.

On Saturday, the Carolina Hurricanes announced that they had come to terms on a new 1 year deal with goaltender Frederik Andersen, signing the veteran netminder to a deal with an average annual value and cap hit of $2.75 million.

While a 1 year deal may seem like a relatively short contract length for a goaltender that currently boasts a 1.59 goals against average and a .936 save percentage in the Stanley Cup playoffs, I think this is merely a case of the Hurricanes being very prudent. Andersen has dealt with a number of injuries and issues that have kept him out of the lineup in recent years, with Andersen playing a total of just 38 regular season games over the course of the past two NHL seasons. The short term deal likely comes as a direct result of the Hurricanes' concerns regarding Andersen's ability to remain healthy for the long haul.

That being said this now makes one more pending unrestricted free agent taken off of the market before free agency has even come close to opening in the NHL, with some even believing that Andersen was likely to be the most desired candidate among the goaltenders available this summer. Teams looking for goaltending help will now have to look elsewhere, and as you can see from the short list below there aren't a ton of great options out there for teams in need.

Here are the top available UFA goalies this summer:

Jake Allen
Alex Lyon
Ilya Samsonov
Alexandar Georgiev
Dan Vladar
David Rittich

Teams looking for a serious upgrade in net this summer will either have to go the trade route or may simply be out of luck.