Better luck next year: Alexandar Georgiev is the wild card for the Colorado Avalanche

He does not need to be great. He just needs to be better. He is capable of that.

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the next team to be officially eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention: The Colorado Avalanche.

Even if it has not always resulted in a championship the Colorado Avalanche have at least been a model of consistency and success over the past seven years. They typically play at a 105-point pace (or better), they have won at least one playoff round in five of those seven years, and they have a championship to validate all of the regular season success.

The 2023-24 season was another strong year that saw them win 50 games again, win a playoff round (by dominating a team that finished ahead of them in the standings) and play a wildly exciting brand of hockey that put them at the top of the goal-scoring leaderboard. And they did all of that despite not having their captain (and one of their best players) in Gabriel Landeskog for a second straight year and dealing with some other significant injuries along the way.

It’s a good team. A great team. Their core players are still very much in the prime of their careers and their window to win is still wide open for the foreseeable future.

They just couldn’t get past the second round and the Dallas Stars.

I don’t necessarily know that it’s because they really did anything wrong, either.

Management addressed a HUGE need at the trade deadline by getting Casey Mittelstadt from the Buffalo Sabres to fill the second-line center void and I thought they made two of the better offseason moves in acquiring Jonathan Drouin (a steal) and Ross Colton to round out their forward depth.

It is hard to argue with the results given how good the offense was. Nobody scored more goals per game in the regular season or playoffs, while they also had mostly excellent underlying 5-on-5 numbers.

There was just one problem that kept lingering all season and really made its presence felt in the second round of the playoffs.

Goaltending.

Specifically, starting goalie Alexander Georgiev and his inability to build on a strong debut season in Colorado.

Let’s talk about it.