The Colorado Avalanche, who won the Stanley Cup in 2022, have struggled in the early stages of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Despite outscoring the Winnipeg Jets 11-9 in the first two games of the series, the Avalanche find themselves tied 1-1 due to shaky performances from starting goaltender Alexandar Georgiev. Georgiev has allowed seven goals on 23 shots in two games, raising concerns about his ability to provide the necessary support for the Avalanche’s offensive firepower, which averaged a league-best 3.68 goals-per-game during the regular season.
The Avalanche’s goaltending woes have been a long-standing issue. Since the departure of Darcy Kuemper in 2022, the team has deployed several goalies, including Georgiev, Justus Annunen, Ivan Prosvetov, and the recently retired Pavel Francouz. While their high-flying offense has allowed them to experiment with their goaltenders, the result of Game 1 against the Jets showed reason for concern.
The Avalanche have retained 11 players from their Stanley Cup-winning squad in 2022, including six of their top eight playoff scorers. However, they possess an entirely different goalie tandem from the 2022 Kuemper/Francouz duo. While Kuemper provided the team with average-level goaltending during their Stanley Cup run, he performed admirably compared to Georgiev’s regular season. Kuemper posted a 2.54 goals-against average (GAA) and a .921 save percentage (SV%) during the regular season, while Georgiev has a .897 SV% this season.
In the 2022 Playoffs, the Avalanche scored at least four goals on 12 different occasions, losing just one of those games. They won all eight games in which they scored at least five goals, accounting for half of their total wins. Despite the average-at-best goaltending from Kuemper, they only conceded three or more goals in 45 percent of their playoff games. This can be largely attributed to the dominance of the Avalanche team in front of him – they averaged just under 40 shots on goal per game, while their opponents averaged 27.9.
Several recent Stanley Cup winners have been elevated by stellar goaltending, such as Andrei Vasilevskiy of the Tampa Bay Lightning (2020 and 2021), Jordan Binnington of the St. Louis Blues (2019), and Matt Murray of the Pittsburgh Penguins (2016 and 2017). Of these netminders, Binnington posted the lowest SV% at .914. In fact, of the last 10 Stanley Cup-winning goaltenders, both Kuemper’s entire playoff mark of .902 and his Stanley Cup Final mark of .908 rank as the lowest.
While this calibre of goaltending is passable (league-average SV% was .907 in 2021-22), it served as a new benchmark for the threshold of a goaltender’s play in order to capture a Stanley Cup. Georgiev’s regular season and postseason play thus far have left a lot to be desired, even when compared to Kuemper’s 2022 Playoffs. Georgiev won a league-best 40 games last season, and followed it up with a league-best 38 wins this season despite his below-average .897 SV%. He was able to skate by and win consistently due to the Avs’ top-tier offense, despite allowing four or more goals in 25 games during the regular season – which equates to 40 percent of his appearances.
The Avalanche will need Georgiev to play to the level of the three-year, $10.2 million contract he signed in July 2022 if they aspire to repeat their dominance from the 2022 Playoffs, or at least to the level in which Kuemper provided them with during their most recent Stanley Cup victory. As they are currently deadlocked in an even 1-1 split with Winnipeg, they must find a productive balance of ways to consistently beat Vezina Trophy favorite Hellebuyck and support for their offense with passable goaltending. They have limited their opponent to an average of 26.5 shots on goal through the first two games of the 2024 Playoffs – an even lower mark than their Stanley Cup team – and will need to continue to do so in order to have a fighting chance should Georgiev continue to underperform
