Abstract The Space Division Multiplexing with Elastic Optical Networks (SDM-EON) is one of the newest networks to improve transmission capacity and prepare more flexibility compared to conventional EON networks. In SDM-EON, arriving connection demands could be setup efficiently. We consider a multi-core fiber (MCF)-enabled elastic optical network. We introduce two novel metrics as holding time metric (HTM) and coefficient of variant metric (CVM). Based on these metrics, three novel algorithms are introduced to resolve the fragmentation problem and improve blocking probability in SDM-EON; called Coefficient of Variant Metric (CVM); Holding Time Metric (HTM); and Moderate Coefficient of Variant Metric and Holding Time Metric (Mod_CVM_HTM) algorithms. According to our performance evaluation results, our proposed algorithms can reduce blocking probability (BP).