Hammond Excited to Continue NHL Career | BLOG

In the sole trade deadline move by the Devils, New Jersey traded Utica Comets forward Nate
Schnarr to Montreal for veteran goaltender Andrew Hammond
. The netminder has eight years of professional experience, mainly playing in the American Hockey League, with stops with the Binghamton Senators, Belleville Senators, San Antonio Rampage, Iowa Wild and Rochester Americans. Hammond has 60 games of NHL experience primarily with the Ottawa Senators, but also with the Colorado Avalanche and Montreal Canadiens.
Before this season, Hammond's last NHL game was during the 2017-18 campaign where he played one game for the Avalanche. However, this year the veteran got another shot with the Montreal Canadiens.
"It's kind of re-invigorated my career a little bit," Hammond said on the opportunity to return to the NHL this season. "I'm definitely more excited showing up to the rink every day. You understand what you were trying to do all along when you were a kid was make it to this level, and it's that much more fun now to have that opportunity, and going forward here in New Jersey to get more opportunities as well."

When the Montreal Canadiens were searching for a goaltender to help fill the gap left by injuries this season they turned to Hammond, who started three games and picked up just as many wins. Hammond's career with the Canadiens started on Feb. 20 against the New York Islanders, which Montreal won 3-2 in a shootout. Hammond's 30 saves on 32 shots and shootout stops over Mat Barzal and Brock Nelson, greatly helped the Canadian club pull away with the victory. Through those games played for Montreal, Hammond had 92 saves on 100 shots with a 2.40 goals-against average.
"When I came to Montreal, they had some tough patches and giving up a number of goals and kind of were hoping I could come in and steady the water a little bit," Hammond explained about his position with the Canadiens this season. "My goal going forward is kind of doing the same thing, ultimately just be myself and provide a steading presence back there and make the saves I'm supposed to make and maybe a few you're not supposed to."
Hammond's most recent game was March 3 against the Calgary Flames where the veteran was injured in that game and has yet to return to the lineup.
"The last game I played in Calgary, pretty early on in the game, got my ankle rolled on a little bit," Hammond explained. "But I've been skating for I think five days now and been progressing every day so tough for me to necessarily put an exact timeline on it, but hopefully here pretty quickly now that I got a number of skates under my belt that we can move in the right direction."
At 34 years old, Hammond is now the oldest player on the Devils, passing fellow goaltender Jonathan Bernier. With this stop in his career, Hammond is looking forward to filling whatever role the Devils need him to fill, including being an open book to the young players.
"I'm looking forward to it. I think I've been in a lot of different situations," he said, "anything I can do to help, I'm willing to do. If anyone has any questions or anything. At the end of the day I understand that having a young team, there may be certain things they need out of veterans more. I'm just trying to be myself and I think that's the kind of approach I'm going to be taking going forward and I'm hoping that goes over well."