Avalanche worried about Alexandar Georgiev’s workload, seeking backup goalie on trade market

The Colorado Avalanche gave the league leader in minutes played a well-earned rest on Tuesday. Goaltender Alexandar Georgiev was scratched from the Avs’ lineup in Ottawa with Colorado giving prospect Justus Annunen a moment to shine in Canada’s capital, allowing for a complete day off for Georgiev.

It was a deliberate break for Georgiev. His workload this season has been a constant topic of conversation in the Avalanche front office – and he’s been playing too much for the liking of general manager Chris MacFarland.

“I’ll be honest with you, I think we’ve got to be careful with the games played thing here,” MacFarland said on the latest episode of Frankly Speaking (playable below). “It’s something we talk about daily.”

Georgiev, 27, is on track to make 66 starts this season and play 68 of Colorado’s 82 games. In the first half of this season, he’s made two more starts and three more appearances than the next closest netminder (Juuse Saros), and as many as five more than some of the NHL’s elite in Connor Hellebuyck and Thatcher Demko. Georgiev has already played 268 more minutes than any goaltender.

His projected 66 starts would be the most by any NHL goaltender in two seasons. And it would come at a time when teams have been more careful than ever, with the sports science information available to them, to not push their goalies’ workloads to the limit.

The data would suggest that Georgiev was at his best when fresh to start the year. He had a .915 save percentage in October and so far, with seven games played in January, is down to an .885 mark. The last goaltender to lead the league in appearances and win the Stanley Cup in that same season is Grant Fuhr with the Edmonton Oilers in 1987-88, when Fuhr played 75 games. Those days are long over.

Georgiev, who played 62 games last year, has been pressed into more duty because of an injury to backup Pavel Francouz, which MacFarland confirmed on Frankly Speaking will keep Francouz out for the year.

“We obviously miss Gabe Landeskog, but the Pavel Francouz late summer injury was a very, very big injury for us,” MacFarland said. “We’ve been very spoiled by having a rocksteady backup or ‘1B,’ whatever you want to call it. Whenever Francouz was called upon the last number of years – including the playoffs – he delivered and he had the perfect temperament to be the guy that if the so-called starter, whether it was [Philipp] Grubauer or [Darcy] Kuemper, needed a three or four game spell, or if there was a 10-day injury, we didn’t bat an eye.

“He had that unreal, professional approach. Prepared. And very important role. We really, really miss that.”

Safe to say, then, that MacFarland will be looking for another goaltender on the trade market? “Yes,” he said. Colorado claimed Ivan Prosvetov from Arizona on Oct. 9 and outside of four spot starts, Prosvetov has only played in three back-to-back scenarios to this point.

“Ivan Prosvetov is a young guy who is trying to find his way in the NHL game,” MacFarland said. “He’s given us some very good starts, but I think there’s an adjustment there [to be made] for everyone – from our coaches, to management in how we attack that thing.”

MacFarland named an ideal number of games played for Georgiev in the latest edition of Frankly Speaking, which you can listen to here: