UPL Injured, Georgiev Signed and Alarm Bells are “Tweaked”

Here’s one out of left field: The Sabres’ organizational goaltending situation seemed completely settled until the team signed veteran goaltender Alexandar Georgiev on Thursday. Today, The Athletic’s Matthew Fairburn shed a little more light on the thinking behind that decision.

“The signing of Georgiev is, in part, a response to an injury to starting goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen. According to a league source, Luukkonen reported to camp with what is described as a 'tweak,'” Fairburn wrote.

He continued by saying the Sabres aren’t clear on the expected recovery time for that injury. The Sabres in recent years have made a habit of underselling the duration and severity of player injuries with day-to-day designations often stretching into weeks, so alarm bells immediately start ringing when this kind of issue crops up. This is especially alarming for Luukkonen who underwent double hip surgery in 2019 to repair a hip impingement and torn labrum on both legs. While there’s currently no indication that his hip/hips would be the issue this time around, it is more than a little concerning that the Sabres organization doesn’t seem to know the severity of whatever ails him.

Enter Georgiev.

The Bulgarian (more on that in a second) goaltender was once-upon-a-time seen as a coveted up-and-comer when he was with the Rangers as part of a tandem with their ace Igor Shesterkin. Interestingly, according to Hockey Reference, Georgiev is the first and only Bulgarian-born hockey player to make it to the NHL from the small Baltic nation. While his numbers declined year-over-year in New York, there was still enough league-wide interest for Colorado to send a third-round pick to New York back in 2022 as Colorado had lost goaltender Darcy Kuemper to free agency that year.

The 2022-23 season would be a comeback season for Georgiev who played in 62 games and finished with a .919 save percentage and 2.53 GAA on an extremely stacked Avalanche team that had won the Stanley Cup the year before. That success was short-lived and the bottom came out from under Georgiev the following season and he has declined every year since, with last’s year’s performance (.875%/3.88) on an abysmal San Jose Sharks team qualifying as a rock bottom of sorts. He easily could have packed up and headed to the KHL, but for whatever reason, he waited for an offer to come in the NHL and he received that from Kevyn Adams in the form of a one year, $825k contract.

What follows here is a bit of speculation and perhaps more than a little pessimism regarding Luukkonen’s status. Firstly, the Sabres season doesn’t start for almost a full month, so if the team brass thought this was a short-term injury, they could easily make it through camp with the newly signed Alex Lyon paired with Devon Levi and 2023 fifth-round pick Scott Ratzlaff who was signed to his entry-level deal this year. Whatever is spooking the Sabres could lead them to believe there is at least a decent chance that Luukkonen’s ailment will linger into the NHL season.

Secondly, on paper, the Sabres had an almost ideal goaltending set-up throughout their organization for the first time in perhaps a decade with Alex Lyon and Luukkonnen as the likely NHL starters, Devon Levi as the workhorse goalie for the Rochester Americans getting the majority of the starts there as he pushes to usurp one of the NHL spots, and Ratzlaff holding down the AHL backup job, ready to take over if-and-when Levi is called to the NHL due to injury or poor play from the likely Sabres tandem. This signing means that if-and-when Luukkonen is healthy, Ratzlaff would be pushed to the ECHL by Georgiev’s presence, which while not a terrible scenario because he could get more playing time, is not ideal for Ratzlaff whose WHL career indicates he is ready for AHL duty.

The other possibility for the rationale of the Georgiev signing outside of injury to Luukkonen is that management is unsure of UPL’s ability to perform at an NHL level after a mediocre 2024-25 season that saw him post an .887 save percentage over 55 games.

Neither of these scenarios – injury or performance concerns – are particularly good signs for the team.

It is also true that the Sabres likely prefer to have someone like Michael Houser or Malcolm Subban on the Americans’ roster to guide the team and perhaps see emergency NHL duty should the need arise. Still, this signing appears to be beyond that category of “career AHLer who won’t look absolutely terrible in the NHL if we have to play him.” Georgiev, despite his recent struggles, is a notch above that level of talent. This seems to be a move predicated on the idea that Georgiev very well may see NHL duty early if the Luukkonen situation doesn’t resolve itself prior to the season opener.

Perhaps it’s the Sabres pessimist coming out here, but this move is ringing some alarm bells about the team’s faith in Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and the goaltending situation in general. It’s still September, though, and the temperatures are into the 80s, so there’s plenty of time for the situation to cool off.