You might believe that Connor McDavid is the face of the 2022-23 NHL. And you might think it is Auston Matthews, Jack Hughes, Trevor Zegras or Cale Makar. Or maybe still Sidney Crosby.
But do you know who is the face of the league? That would be Alexandar Georgiev, who is falling upward in rather historical fashion in going from a below-average backup for the Rangers to the No. 1 job for the defending Stanley Cup champion Avalanche.
It is Georgiev who best personifies a league that now features an interchangeable flock of goaltenders. This is apparently not a blip, but a feature. The Andrei Vasilevskiys and Igor Shesterkins are in a minority. The franchise goalie has become an endangered species.
Colorado management opted not to keep Cup-winning goaltender Darcy Kuemper from hitting the open market and fleeing as a free agent to Washington. Given Kuemper’s playoff save percentage of a pedestrian .902, that is quite understandable. Fact is, the Avalanche won 16 playoff games with a .901 save percentage.
So instead, GM Joe Sakic acquired the 26-year-old Georgiev from the Blueshirts in exchange for a pair of third-rounders and a fifth. Of course he did. Who else would you want but a goaltender who had recorded a save percentage of below .900 in 14 of his 28 starts last year and nine of his 18 the year before that?
Georgiev, at age 26, had shown flashes of brilliance in his first couple of years as Henrik Lundqvist’s understudy. But he became unhappy in his role when usurped by Shesterkin as the King’s heir. The netminder’s technique faltered. His effectiveness dropped precipitously. Maybe a change in attitude will be more meaningful than the change in altitude.
Alexandar Georgiev is now the No. 1 goalie on the reigning Cup champion, despite his less-than-stellar stats. AP Photo
Still, Kuemper’s save percentage during the season was .921. That sets a high bar for Georgiev, who by the way has never started more than three straight games in his NHL career. But this is the path the Avalanche have chosen to follow in their title defense. Once, this type of call would have stood out as extraordinary. Now, it seems as if it is business as usual, or have you overlooked Toronto’s decision to enlist Matt Murray?
There has been a fair amount of hype surrounding the lower tier of the NHL with much of the offseason focus trained on rebuilding (some perpetually) outfits in Buffalo, New Jersey, Detroit and Ottawa. Slowly, even if not quite surely, these perennial lottery dwellers have bolstered their respective talent bases and should provide entertainment.
But the gap from there to the playoffs has never seemed greater since the last years of the Original Six, when the 70-game schedule served as filter to eliminate the Rangers and Bruins. (From 1960 through 1967, Montreal, Toronto, Detroit and Chicago accounted for 30 of the 32 total playoff spots, the Blueshirts qualifying in 1962 and 1967.)
The hard cap era that began in 2005-06 encompasses 17 seasons. Discounting the lockout 2012-13 that featured a 48-game in-conference schedule and the COVID-impacted 2020-21 that featured a 56-game in-division schedule, last year was the first time the NHL had four teams with a .700 winning percentage, 10 teams over .650 and five clubs below .400.
The league had only seven teams combined that hit the .700 plateau over the previous seven full seasons and only four clubs total that failed to hit the .400 bar over the previous five full seasons. The NHL last year was a parody of parity.
So, can the Devils make a jump to the tournament? If so, they will have to make up 37 points on the second wild-card Capitals. The Senators, only 27. Perhaps these clubs shouldn’t mind a stumble into the Connor Bedard Sweepstakes.
A look at the season ahead:
Tank City
There is only a 25.5 percent chance that the club that finishes last overall will emerge from the lottery with the right to select Connor Bedard, the 17-year-old center out of Regina who is the universally acclaimed next generational NHL athlete. (Finishing 31st overall comes with odds of 13.5 percent.)
But those numbers will not deter the Blackhawks, Coyotes, Canadiens, Sharks and maybe even the Flyers from devising means to go as low as they can go. Rock bottom this season, coupled with some good old-fashioned Jeff Gorton-type luck, is not the worst place to be.
The prospect of drafting Connor Bedard could see a number of team tank their way down the standings. Getty Images
Speaking of Marty St. Louis. Get the segue? This will be a full year of teaching and exercising patience for the Habs head coach, whose presence in Montreal has added credibility to the program but is likely to be severely tested by a tank (Shhhhh!) mentality.
Here’s David Quinn in San Jose for his NHL Rebuild 2.0 (and 0-2, no less!) only this time without a formal Letter and this time without the likelihood of accelerating the program by signing an Artemi Panarin and promoting an Igor Shesterkin.
The Coyotes of Arizona State — why not? — are still tanking for Matthews, aren’t they? And while John Tortorella might have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the good night of the pingpong drawing, the failure of Philadelphia management/ownership to develop a program beyond hiring this coach is indefensible. Oh, I forgot, if Ryan Ellis hadn’t gotten hurt, it would all be different.
The Field
The Senators are proclaiming that the rebuild is over, which seems wishful thinking even with the additions of Alex DeBrincat and Claude Giroux. Losing Cam Talbot for a stretch in nets won’t help. Pat Verbeek, in his first full year as GM in Anaheim, won’t throw out the baby with the bath water, so instead of a teardown, the Ducks have invested in top-sixers Ryan Strome and Frank Vatrano.
The Kraken, who somehow have no idea what to do with their bequeathed $81.5 million is cap space for last year’s inaugural season, still have Dave Hakstol behind the bench. With reasons less attached to his coaching acumen and instead tied into the mess Vancouver management has created despite top-seven drafts yielding Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes and having Vezina contender Thatcher Demko in nets, Bruce Boudreau could be hearing, “Bruce, there’s the pink slip,” before the season ends.
The Kings somehow still have all of those prospects in the middle with none having been exchanged for one of the Rangers’ prospects on the blue line. Will Jonathan Quick finish the season in LA? Jason Robertson has signed a four-year contract with the Stars worth an annual AAV of $7.75 million per, and if that is considered a bridge deal, it is truly paved with gold. In case you have lost track, Pete DeBoer has gotten off the merry-go-round in Dallas as coach of his fifth team in 14 years.
The Blues seem to have settled into a cycle of mediocrity, too far removed from their 2019 Cup championship to harbor illusions of returning to power absent an extreme makeover. And the shine has rubbed off the Vegas operation entirely, even as the Golden Knights are as likely as not to return to the playoffs with Jack Eichel presumably healthy.
Which is more striking? That Nashville’s David Poile holds the NHL record for most career victories “by” a general manager with a total of 1,491 with the Caps (594) and the Predators (897); or that David Poile has never won the Cup in his 40 years as a GM.
The Jets, with Rick Bowness coming full circle in rejoining the club he first coached (for a part of a season) 34 years ago, might want to recognize that this core’s window closed the moment Mark Scheifele got himself suspended under the bubble.
If the Devils get competent goaltending, that would go a long, long way into the team’s transformation into a playoff contender following years in which the product has amounted to far less than the sum of its parts. But do you know what would be even more helpful? Competent coaching, structure and an ownership that elevates winning over social media presence as a priority.
Jack Hughes and the Devils need a lot more than his continued progression as an NHL star. Getty Images
No such worries about that last priority with the Islanders, who should be able to ride their structure and Ilya Sorokin into at least a mild bounce-back season. But the emphasis on winning 3-2 is an anachronism in a league whose regular-season success is dependent on talent, speed and creativity.
Calculating the upside of Moritz Seider — who is on the Makar-Adam Fox fast track to Norris contention — and Lucas Raymond make the Red Wings worth watching, as do Owen Power, Tage Thompson and Dylan Cozens for the Sabres, who seem finally to have a plan.
Yes, Johnny Gaudreau is the counterpoint in Columbus to Panarin, Sergei Bobrovsky and Seth Jones, who all sought to get out of Dodge as soon as the law would allow, but the Jackets aren’t nearly deep enough in critical areas to contend for a tournament spot.
Paul Maurice, whose recent coaching playoff history includes the Winnipeg collapse under the bubble, has taken over a Panthers team that probably didn’t improve nearly as much as they think by swapping Jonathan Huberdeau and Mackenzie Weegar for Matthew Tkachuk.
Matthew Tkachuk’s trade to Florida was one of the most seismic moves during the NHL offseason. Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
The Legacy Teams
The Penguins, a regular-season marvel for years, are sure enthused that they have brought back the core that features Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang that has not won a playoff round since 2019.
The Bruins start without Charlie McAvoy, Brad Marchand and Matt Grzelcyk and needing an upper-echelon performance in goal from Jeremy Swayman to retain hold of a playoff spot while the Caps, who have not won a playoff series since 2019, will open without Nicklas Backstrom (who may miss the entire season) and Tom Wilson. Don’t fret: Alex Ovechkin’s Instagram’s profile still features a picture of him posing with Putin.
The Contenders
Kirill Kaprizov may be the most exciting player in the league and will in the running for the Hart, Matt Boldy is a prime youngster, the defense is deep but Marc-Andre Fleury will have to turn in a throwback year if the Wild for once don’t come up short in the playoffs.
I don’t know, was it really so classy for the universally recognized class operation in Tampa Bay to threaten Ryan McDonagh with waivers unless the two-time champ agreed to waive his no-trade, and pronto, in order to be traded to Nashville?
Essentially nothing the Maple Leafs do during the season matters until they get to a potential playoff series clincher, in which they are 0-6 over the last three years with Sheldon Keefe behind the bench. Of course, finishing first so they can avoid a potential first-round Tampa Bay-Florida vortex matters, come to think of it.
I don’t know that Carolina necessarily improved with its offseason machinations and I’m not convinced that a healthy Freddie Andersen would make the difference, but the ’Canes are deep and diversified and would follow coach Rod Brind’Amour anywhere.
Yes, the Rangers. You will be able to read about them elsewhere in depth in these pages and on this bandwidth. But this observation: Is it possible already that Adam Fox is being underrated?
You know what I think? That the Battle of Alberta will be decisive in crowning a champion despite years of missteps by Edmonton management and because of a summer of personnel moves worthy of celebration in Calgary.
The defending champs are still brimming with talent but even if the Avalanche don’t miss a beat with their turnover in net, they will rue the day that Nazem Kadri skipped out for Calgary.
How do you think it would go over in Toronto if Jack Campbell wins the Conn Smythe?