Alexandar Georgiev was everything the Avalanche could have hoped for and more in his first season in Colorado.
The Avs needed a replacement for Stanley Cup-winning goalie Darcy Keumper, and Georgiev proved to be a breakout star in his first season an an NHL starter. He became a dependable workhorse while Pavel Francouz missed much of the season with injuries.
Maybe even a little too dependable.
“He was playing back-to-backs late in the season, which is just crazy,” Avs star Nathan MacKinnon said. “So, if we could get 25-30 games from someone else … I’d love to see (Georgiev) get some more rest.”
Given the team’s Cup-or-bust expectations, that would be a wise move.
Georgiev played in 62 games for the Avs during the regular season, then seven more in the playoffs. He spent parts of five seasons with the Rangers, and the most NHL games he played in up until last season was 35 in 2021-22 (33 in the regular season, two in the playoffs).
He did play in 40-plus games combined between the AHL and NHL in his first two seasons with the Rangers, but nearly hitting 70 last year was easily the most he’s logged in any professional season, including his three in Finland.
After years of waiting for his turn to be a No. 1 guy in New York, Georgiev didn’t mind the heavy workload.
“It felt really good,” Georgiev said. “Much less thinking. You kind of trust that you are going to play a lot, so you know how to approach it. I don’t have to overthink things. And it’s more about managing the practice load, I would say more than anything, but I felt good.”
When the calendar flipped to February, Georgiev was collecting starts at a solid clip. He appeared in 34 of the team’s first 49 contests. That’s a pace of 56-57 over a full season. That would have placed him 10th or 11th in the league in games and starts.
Then Francouz sustained a lower-body injury in early February that knocked him out of the lineup for two months. Georgiev started 28 of the Avs’ final 33 games, including three sets of back-to-backs. He finished with the third-most games and starts in the NHL.
He was also great — Colorado went 20-5-3 in those starts to rally and win the Central Division. It helped cement Georgiev as one of the league’s top netminders, and he finished seventh in the Vezina Trophy voting.
But that was still more work than the Avs wanted to give him.
“That was out of necessity,” coach Jared Bednar said. “Yeah … ideal world he plays 50-plus (in a season).”
The issue with playing a goaltender too much is twofold. There’s the short-term concerns — leaning too heavily on a goalie in November or March might affect his performances in April, May and June. Then there are longer-term issues with durability.
It’s not apples to apples, but some of the concerns with goalie workloads are similar to pitchers in baseball. The trend in recent seasons has clearly been to play even the best goaltenders less. Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy played more than any goalie over the previous four seasons. He’s now set to miss a chunk of this one because of back surgery.
“I just think the league has changed so much,” TSN analyst and former GM Craig Button said. “Ideally, I think you’d get your goaltender into that 50-game range, but now you’ve got to find 32 games somewhere else. That’s the key is finding the 30-32 games somewhere and spacing it out. It’s not so much the 50 games, per se. It is, ‘OK, is he playing every game for the last month of the season?’
“I think a strong team and a good defensive team, which I think Colorado is a very good defensive team, they don’t need stand-on-your-head goaltending to have success. And I think Georgiev is a really good, strong, dependable goaltender.”
The Avalanche begins the season Wednesday night in Los Angeles, and the goaltending situation is in an all-too-familiar place. Francouz has been a very effective goalie — when he is healthy.
That’s a huge caveat, because he has not participated in training camp and there’s no timeline for when he will return. The Avs used three other goaltenders last season — Jonas Johansson, Keith Kincaid and Justus Annunen — but only for a combined four starts and six appearances.
The club broke camp with Annunen as the backup, but then claimed 24-year-old Ivan Prosvetov on waivers Monday from Arizona. He has 11 NHL starts and 13 appearances spread across three seasons on his resume. It’s more than Annunen has, who did impress during camp, but not by much.
Whether it is Prosvetov, Annunen or someone else, the coaching staff needs to find another netminder it can trust to provide Georgiev with enough rest until Francouz can return.
It’s clear the Avs plan to lean on Georgiev to be the No. 1 goaltender this season. Because of the nature of the position, and Georgiev’s relatively short track record, there’s still some “OK, but can he do it again?” that will be part of a season-long narrative.
There’s also an expectation for a deep postseason run, which means the Avs might need Georgiev for 20-plus games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Finding a way for him to play 50-something times during the regular season instead of 60-plus could make a huge difference.
“That’s not not my decision,” Georgiev said of his preferred workload. “Obviously, we have coaches for that. I just need to play every single game I get at my ‘A’ level, then the coaching staff will decide how many I play.
“I think it’s a long season and you need to approach it just day-by-day. There’s a lot of good teams in the league, and every game is important. We just need to focus on one day at a time and when we build those good habits during the season, they’re going to translate to the playoffs.”
Alexandar the Great?
Alexandar Georgiev joined a rather small group of goaltenders last season. He became the seventh goalie in the past 15 years to play 60-plus games after never playing more than 40 in a previous NHL season. Five of the seven received Vezina Trophy votes, but only two of the previous six did so in the following season. Four of the previous six had a worse save percentage in the follow up to their breakout campaign.
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| Player, team | 1st year | GP | SV% | Vezina | 2nd year | GP | SV% | Vezina |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alexandar Georgiev, COL | 2022-23 | 62 | .918 | 7th | 2023-24 | TBD | TBD | TBD |
| Thatcher Demko, VAN | 2021-22 | 64 | .915 | 7th | 2022-23 | 32 | .901 | N/A |
| Juuse Saros, NSH | 2021-22 | 67 | .918 | 3rd | 2022-23 | 64 | .919 | 4th |
| Jacob Markstrom, VAN | 2017-18 | 60 | .912 | N/A | 2018-19 | 60 | .912 | 10th |
| Antti Niemi, SJ | 2010-11 | 60 | .920 | 8th | 2011-12 | 68 | .915 | N/A |
| Craig Anderson, COL | 2009-10 | 71 | .917 | 4th | 2010-11 | 51 | .913 | N/A |
| Ilya Bryzgalov, ANA/PHX | 2007-08 | 64 | .920 | N/A | 2008-09 | 65 | .908 | N/A |
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