{"id":198422,"date":"2025-10-08T21:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T21:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/198422\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T21:00:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T21:00:09","slug":"sabres-alexandar-georgiev-clears-waivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/198422\/","title":{"rendered":"Sabres’ Alexandar Georgiev Clears Waivers"},"content":{"rendered":"

10\/8: Georgiev has cleared waivers for the Sabres, per Sportsnet\u2019s Elliotte Friedman<\/a>. He will head to the AHL\u2019s Rochester Americans, per Chad DeDominicis of Expected Buffalo<\/a>. DeDominicis points out that Georgiev will become the fourth goalie on Rochester\u2019s lineup, likely prompting another move or demotion to the ECHL for one of the quartet.<\/p>\n

10\/7: The Sabres will be placing goaltender\u00a0Alexandar Georgiev<\/a>\u00a0on waivers today, head coach Lindy Ruff<\/a>\u00a0told reporters (including Bill Hoppe of the Olean Times Herald<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Georgiev was listed on Buffalo\u2019s opening night roster yesterday, but they were carrying three goalies after claiming\u00a0Colten Ellis<\/a>\u00a0off waivers from the Blues. The Sabres value the latter more, with Ruff telling Rachel Lenzi of The Buffalo News that Ellis is someone the Sabres have been \u201creally high on\u201d for quite some time and were unwilling to pass up the opportunity to have him on the wire. As a result, Georgiev won\u2019t be starting the season with the club and will head to AHL Rochester should he clear waivers.<\/p>\n

Georgiev, 29, finished top 10 in Vezina Trophy voting as recently as 2022-23 but is now scrambling to find an NHL job. He made 49 appearances last year between the Avalanche and the Sharks, heading to San Jose in the midseason deal that sent\u00a0Mackenzie Blackwood<\/a>\u00a0the other way. Among goalies with at least 30 starts, no one had a worse save percentage or GAA than Georgiev\u2019s marks of .875 and 3.71, and that includes making over a third of his appearances behind a dominant group of Colorado skaters in the first half of the year.<\/p>\n

He still has roughly league-average numbers for his career. Since debuting with the Rangers in the 2017-18 season, he\u2019s logged a 151-108-26 record with 15 shutouts, a 2.99 GAA, and a .903 SV% in 303 appearances. He\u2019s allowed 21.1 goals (4%) more than the average netminder during that time. It\u2019s his last two seasons of work that have soured teams. Despite posting a league-leading 38 wins for the Avs in 2023-24, he only managed a .897 SV% in 63 appearances. That preceded a 2024-25 campaign where only the Flyers\u2019\u00a0Samuel Ersson<\/a>\u00a0posted a worse goals saved above expected figure than Georgiev\u2019s -17.9, according to MoneyPuck<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That three-goalie figure from yesterday doesn\u2019t include starter\u00a0Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen<\/a>, who begins the season on injured reserve after suffering a lower-body injury late in preseason. That\u2019s a different injury from the one he showed up to camp with, which was the motivator for Buffalo to sign Georgiev to a one-year, $825K deal<\/a> last month in the first place. Luukkonen has improved in the past few days, according to Paul Hamilton of WGR Sports Radio 550<\/a>, although he still carries a week-to-week designation. Buffalo certainly wasn\u2019t going to carry four goalies after he returned, so it\u2019s no surprise to see them get ahead of the wheel and remove one from their active roster now \u2013 especially after Georgiev allowed 11 goals on 74 shots in four preseason games for a .851 SV% and 4.19 GAA.<\/p>\n

The Sabres might very well carry three goalies when Lukkonen returns, though. It\u2019s hard to see them risk losing Ellis on waivers unless he struggles in his first taste of NHL action. The club also signed\u00a0Alex Lyon<\/a>\u00a0to a two-year, $3MM deal in free agency over the offseason to be Luukkonen\u2019s primary backup option. He might have an easier time passing through waivers thanks to his $1.5MM cap hit, so if Buffalo does want to only carry the traditional pair, Lyon might end up hitting the wire, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"10\/8: Georgiev has cleared waivers for the Sabres, per Sportsnet\u2019s Elliotte Friedman. He will head to the AHL\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[98148,741,49,48,4247,82,4584,48340],"class_list":["post-198422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-alexandar-georgiev","tag-buffalo-sabres","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-newsstand","tag-sports","tag-transactions","tag-waivers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}