On February 10th, 2019, Alexandar Georgiev stole the show against the Toronto Maple Leafs, stopping 55 of 56 shots en route to a 4–1 victory for the New York Rangers, in what should have been by any conventional wisdom the complete opposite. The Maple Leafs fired everything from everywhere on the Bulgarian netminder, controlling over 65% percent of the shot attempts at all situations during the game. Nobody was quite sure who this Georgiev guy was, considering just a month earlier the Leafs had taken him to town with four goals against in an eventual 5–3 win on December 22, 2018, (of note, the first goal of the game was Patrick Marleau, howdy there Patty!) but nonetheless, Georgiev had firmly cemented himself in Leafs lore as one of the several “who are you?” goaltenders to give the Leafs absolute fits for no particular reason.

Of late, however, Georgiev’s connection to the Leafs has come in a completely different form, as several outlets including TSN and Sportsnet have linked the Leafs to the Rangers backup. The Blueshirts, who have built up a strong goaltender pipeline in recent years, are seeking a means to recoup assets on a goalie likely to be pushed out by the exceptional Igor Shesterkin, who after dominating the KHL and laying waste to the AHL has seamlessly slotted in for the Rangers with an excellent .926 Save Percentage through two games. Initially, with the Maple Leafs seemingly working to move Jeremy Bracco, much of the Leafs/Rangers trade chatter seemed to revolve around a move for the pass-first winger. Friday morning, however, an article from James Mirtle of The Athletic quickly quashed that idea, as he explained the ask would likely come in much higher than that. Then, just mere moments later, however, everyone’s favourite Mitch Marner stan Darren Dreger joined the party with a tweet that would quickly rile up much of Leafs Nation.

While many Leafs fans feel pretty negatively about Dreger considering his strong connections (to put it lightly) with Darren Ferris, he’s obviously got a finger on the pulse as far as how assets are valued on the trade market. If a cheap, cost-controlled winger isn’t enough to get a goalie like Georgiev as Dreger seems to imply, then perhaps it's worth giving pause to the exercise of trying to acquire him altogether. The Leafs shouldn’t be trying to create holes in their team to fill other ones.

Even beyond his perceived trade value being exceptionally high, maybe he’s worth that after all, and it's just a game of him being out of the Leaf’s price range. Maybe another less cap-strapped team desperate for a starting goalie, San Jose immediately comes to mind, would part with one of their young assets in order to secure Georgiev such as a Kevin Labanc or even an asset as unthinkable as Timo Meier (spoiler alert, don’t bet on that second one). After all, a team like the Sharks aren’t getting any younger, and Martin Jones has once again sunk their season with backup Aaron Dell providing some, though not enough, help in the matter with their .891 and .909 save percentages respectively.

It seems that Georgiev has caught a case of the “Connected to the Leafs”-itis, because for the Rangers to be managing a return of those proportions, much less of Kapanen’s ilk, would be obscene for a goalie of Georgiev’s tier. According to NaturalStatTrick, amongst goalies with at least 500 minutes of TOI, Georgiev ranks just 33rd out of 59 qualified goalies in Goals Saved Above Average per 60, sitting almost break-even at -0.02/60. Notably, the Maple Leafs current backup Michael Hutchinson rates 3rd worst in the category at -0.73 GSAA/60, which makes the gap between having Hutchinson and Georgiev in the net roughly equal to having Georgiev and the league leader in GSAA/60 Anton Khudobin in net, but I digress.

CoriscaHockey’s goaltending model, which varies from NaturalStatTrick’s model, similarly shows that Georgiev is clearly not worth the return that he could purportedly fetch. Georgiev ranks 19th in their GSAA model at a fairly pedestrian 1.33 Goals Save Above Average. Even amongst his peer group, his numbers as a 1B/Backup by no means pop off the page.