Why can’t Alexandar Georgiev win back-to-back games?

How Shesterkin compares

Last season Igor Shesterkin started back-to-back games five times including one three game consecutive stretch.  He won them all.

It’s a little different story this season .  His record is 3-4-1 in eight games he has played back-to-back, but before his injury he had won two straight consecutive starts.

Over his brief career, that means that on the 13 occasions when Shesterkin has started consecutive games, he has won eight times.  Compare that to the 11 wins for Georgiev in 30 starts.

Conclusions

Obviously, you cannot judge a goalies’ abilities strictly on wins and losses.  For Georgiev, the team in front of him was a defensive disaster for many of those games.  We’ve all seen him steal wins and makes outstanding stops.  The issue is that he doesn’t do it as often when he is starting consecutive games.

To become a winning team you need winning streaks and many winning streaks are built on the foundation of a hot goalie. That is amplified in the Stanley Cup Playoffs when you have to count on your number one goalie to take the team far.  There are not a lot of successful playoff teams that relied on a goalie platoon system.

To be clear, this deep dive doesn’t mean that Alexandar Georgiev is a bad goalie.  It does point out that he has had issues winning consecutive games and his coaches need to figure out why that is happening. And if they cannot figure it out, they need to keep him away from consecutive starts.

The fact is that Georgiev’s record when he has a heavy workload is not the best and he needs to prove that he can be the guy in net if he wants to challenge Shesterkin for the top job or to become a number one netminder anywhere in the NHL.