Winners and Losers from Avalanche's Mackenzie Blackwood Trade for Alexandar Georgiev

Goaltending has been the clear and obvious Achilles heel for the Colorado Avalanche so far this season.

In one week, team president Joe Sakic and general manager Chris MacFarland have taken drastic action to completely overhaul the position.

After trading Justus Annunen for Scott Wedgewood, he followed that up on Monday by acquiring Mackenzie Blackwood from the San Jose Sharks.

In exchange for Blackwood, the Avalanche are sending Alexandar Georgiev, Nikolai Kovalenko, and two draft picks (a 2026 second-round pick and a 2025 fifth-round pick) to San Jose.

Blackwood has a .909 save percentage so far this season for the Sharks and should help upgrade an Avalanche goalie position that has been one of the worst in the NHL this season.

The Avalanche ranked 31st in the NHL in 5-on-5 save percentage and 32nd in all situations save percentage according to NaturalStatTrick.com.

What sort of an impact will this trade have?

Let's take a look at some winners and losers from the deal.

There are a lot of reasons why Blackwood is a big winner here.

For one, he gets to go from a rebuilding team that is going nowhere in the short term (San Jose) to a roster that should be a playoff team and a potential contender this season (Colorado).

He is also going to go from playing behind one of the NHL's worst defensive teams with almost no offensive support to a team that has a great defense on paper and some serious high-end talent on the roster.

That alone makes it a much better situation for him as goalie.

The Sharks are 30th in the NHL in expected goals against per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 play according to Natural Stat Trick, and do not generate a ton of offense. That is a tough spot to succeed in.

The big question will be whether or not that is enough for Blackwood to succeed. When he was given the opportunity to be a starter in New Jersey with some serious team-wide expectations, he badly flopped. Prior to this season, his save percentage was under .900 for three consecutive seasons, and he only has a 17-game sampling this season of above average play in a situation where there was no expectation and no eyeballs on him.

He will not only have expectations here, he will have pressure on him to perform.

Can he do it?

It is a good situation for him to try. He still has to prove he do it.

After an outstanding debut season in Colorado, it just never really worked out for Georgiev the past two seasons with the Avalanche.

The good news? He gets a fresh start and a clean slate in San Jose and a chance to maybe hit the reset button.

The bad news? Well, it is the exact opposite situation that Blackwood is dealing with. Instead of going from the bad, rebuilding team to the contender with good support, he is going from the good team to the rebuilding team with the bad defense. If it does not work out well for him in Colorado, he is going to have to put it together to make it work in San Jose.

The best case for Georgiev: He plays well for the next few months and gets dealt to another contender before the trade deadline.

While Georgiev figures to get playing time in San Jose, the obvious boost here for the Sharks is what it could mean for Yaroslav Askarov.

Askarov has been fantastic this season in both the AHL and his limited NHL duty, and now it might be time to turn him loose as the team's starter.

The Sharks acquired him earlier this year from the Nashville Predators with the hope that he would eventually become their long-term, No. 1 goalie. That time might now be arriving.

Along with the potential for Askarov, the Sharks also land two future draft pick assets (including a second-round pick) and an interesting forward in Kovalenko that could still have some untapped upside.

Even though the record might not indicate it, the Avalanche are still an incredibly dangerous team in the Western Conference.

Any roster that still has Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Cale Makar and Devon Toews will be a potential problem in a best-of-seven series. But goaltending is always the one great X-factor in hockey, and it can quickly take a contender and turn it into a pretender and create the illusion that there are a lot of other flaws on the roster that do not exist.

Just keep something in mind with the Avalanche here: They are still 16-13-0 this season despite getting what has, quite literally, been the worst goaltending performance in the NHL this season.

Teams that struggle that much in net tend to lose a lot of games. It is a testament to how good the rest of the roster can be that Colorado has still won more than half of its games despite getting so little help from its goalies.

They do not need somebody to steal games for them.

They do not need somebody to win games for them.

They mostly just need somebody to not lose games for them.

If they start getting that, the rest of the Western Conference is going to have another strong contender to deal with.

Sakic (president of hockey operations) and MacFarland (general manager) knew their team had a clear weakness and quickly worked to completely change the depth chart.

That is not easy to do in-season, and especially just two months into the season.

There is also a lot to be said about a front office being somewhat proactive and trying to fix a problem (even if it is a problem he helped create).

There should still be some concern and question as to whether or not Blackwood and Wedgewood are the answer to Colorado's issues (especially since neither has ever started an NHL playoff game), but it is also hard to imagine them being worse.

It is also hard to imagine him finding better alternatives at this point in the season given how thin the goalie trade market is. Who else would have legitimately been available at this point for a better price or a better return? John Gibson is having a decent bounce-back season in Anaheim, but those improved numbers are in just eight games and his contract is still a mess.

They had to do something before it was too late. They made it happen.