Cory Schneider has a pretty good idea of what it’s like to be in Alexandar Georgiev‘s skates right now.
Georgiev started the 2024-25 season with back-to-back duds, getting pulled at the end of the second period and then early in the middle frame. His third start, Monday night against the New York Islanders at Ball Arena, was better but still not close to what he or the team expects — a 6-2 loss that dropped Colorado to 0-3.
“The beginning of the season is always tough,” said Schneider, who played 410 games over a 13-year NHL career that ended with the Islanders after the 2021-22 season. “If you get off to a bad start, you don’t have a body of work to rely on, or your numbers look terrible because you can’t balance it out that quickly.
“Sometimes you are like, ‘I can still do this, right?’ You know, pucks keep going in. You can’t make that big save. You start to doubt yourself a little bit. So I think he just seems a little unsettled, a little unsure, not quite trusting his game and his instincts.”
Schneider’s start to the 2018-19 season with the New Jersey Devils was a nightmare. He missed the first few weeks recovering from an injury, then went 0-5-1 with a .852 save percentage in nine appearances before being sent to the AHL to rebuild his confidence and his game.
He returned to the Devils after seven weeks away, and the rest of his season looked a lot more like the Schneider who had been one of the more underrated goalies of his era. It was a .921 save percentage over his final 17 games.
“As a goalie, you start fresh. You can’t count on last year,” Schneider said. “You can’t rely on those stats or those memories of what you did last year. He’ll be fine, I’m sure. But when you wake up and you look at a .680 save percentage, it’s like, ‘I’ve got a lot of work to do.’ Then all of a sudden you start overthinking and trying to make up a lot of ground in one game. And you can only take it a period of time.”
Sending Georgiev to the AHL to work things out is not likely to be an option for Colorado. But the Avalanche did add Kaapo Kahkonen on waivers from Winnipeg, and he could give Georgiev a chance to reset and work on some things once he arrives.
Georgiev did improve from Game 2 to Game 3, but there were still a couple of goals, at least, that he’d like back.
“Probably not a great start, right?” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “But I thought that was our worst defensive game of the three (losses to start the season) by a mile, not even close. And so like tonight, he made a lot of good saves. He did.
“I look at it and that was his best of the three. He made some big saves. He looked more like himself tonight, which is a big step in the right direction.”
To Schneider’s point about Georgiev maybe not trusting his instincts, the Islanders’ second goal was a weird one for the Avs’ starter to allow. Kyle Palmieri came in alone on a breakaway, and Georgiev decided to lunge at him with a poke check.
The goalie did get the puck, but not enough of it to erase the threat. Palmieri recollected it and had an easy one with the goaltender out of the crease.
Kyle Palmieri (21) of the New York Islanders scores past goalie Alexandar Georgiev (40) of the Colorado Avalanche in the first period at Ball Arena on October 14, 2024, in Denver. (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
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It’s not that going for the poke check was necessarily the wrong move, but it felt out of character for Georgiev. There was another goal later in the game where it looked like he didn’t trust himself to just sit back and wait in his traditional stance as well.
After yielding eight goals on 25 shots in two games to start the year, allowing five on 37 shots was better. It’s still not good enough, but goalies don’t always just snap out of a funk immediately the way Georgiev did during the playoffs in Winnipeg last spring.
“He’s not a young guy. He’s got the body of work. They’ve won with him, at least in the regular season,” Schneider said. “With this group in Colorado, sometimes you just need to be good enough, and they’ll score and you’ll get wins, and that’s what they’re looking for.
“I think for him right now, instead of trying to pitch a shutout, you just have to be good enough to win a game, and then that takes some of the heat off. One good game and a win and it calms everything down so I think it’s knowing you’ve done it before and trusting that you can do it again.”
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