Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2023-24 edition Ask a direct question about this edition of the book — who, how many, how common, which group more — and it is answered with a table computed on this page from the edition’s index: the season line, height and age, the on-ice percentiles, the grades and the traits read out of every report. Ask for a view on named players — what a comparison comes down to, what makes a man — and you get the book’s reading of their own pages, and only those. The model turns your question into a query and phrases the result, or reads the pages it is handed; it never originates a figure, and an answer carrying a figure that is on neither the table nor the pages is withheld. It does not forecast, and it says so when a question is outside what the book holds.

Tables are computed on this page from the 2023-24 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
← 2023-24 edition

This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →

40

Alexandar Georgiev

Colorado Avalanche Goaltender

Forty wins, tied for the most in the National Hockey League, from an undrafted goaltender in his first year as a starter.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2017-18NYR10441273.150331.918
2018-19NYR3314134912.9121057.914
2019-20NYR3417142963.0421063.910
2020-21NYR19872442.712465.905
2021-22NYR3315102852.922832.898
2022-23COL62401661562.5351904.918
2023-24 so far——————————
Career—1919864174992.80135652.912

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

40 wins in 62 games — tied with Linus Ullmark for the most in the league — with a .9181 save percentage, a 2.53 goals-against average and five shutouts on 1,904 shots.

Every one of those is a career best, and it was his first season as a number one. Five years in New York produced 129 games behind Lundqvist and then Shesterkin, and a save percentage that fell every year from .9184 to .8978.

Colorado’s goaltending graded plus-8.7, tenth in the league. That is the honest measure of the season — good, clearly above the line, and a long way from what forty wins usually implies about a goaltender.

The Finesse Game

He is 6-1 and 178, which makes him one of the smaller starters in a league that has stopped drafting men this size.

The method is depth and quickness rather than coverage: he plays back in his crease, lets the shot come to him and relies on being able to get across. Against clean looks he is very good. Against traffic and second chances the record is less kind, and the rebound is where the goals against him have come from throughout his career.

The .9181 came behind a club that finished sixth in expected goals against. Both halves of that are true and the ordering matters.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, out of Bulgaria by way of Finland and the Swedish junior system, and a career built entirely on being the man available when somebody got hurt.

Colorado traded for him in the summer of 2022 to replace a Cup-winning tandem and got forty wins in the first year. They then lost a seven-game first round to Seattle, and the reputation from that series will outlast the regular season it followed.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

  • a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
  • he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

  • undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached

    “Undrafted, out of Bulgaria by way of Finland and the Swedish junior system, and a career built entirely on being the man available when somebody got hurt.”

  • plays-deepa strength· takes the net away by occupying it

    “he plays back in his crease, lets the shot come to him and relies on being able to get across”

  • lateral-recoverya strength· post-to-post, and across the slot

    “The method is depth and quickness rather than coverage”

  • rebound-controlhe lacks it· where the second chance ends up

    “the rebound is where the goals against him have come from throughout his career”