It completely turns because the pool of players implied by using "starter" and the actual pool of players is 46% larger. Being 27th out of 48 means you were middle of the pack instead of, as you said in your original post, "statistically amongst the worst starters in the league."
You can move the goalposts as much as you'd like. At the end of the day, Commesso and Askarov played in the same league last year and Askarov's sv% was barely better than Commesso's. Askarov, despite all the pedigree and all the hype from his draft year, barely out-performed a player from his same draft year who was in his rookie pro season. Askarov was not one of the top goaltenders in the AHL. He hasn't been a top goaltender in any league he's played in since his draft year.
Stat watching ahl goalies is not recommended
No system can be implemented usually for players because it’s the jungle where everybody is for themselves who has one goal m to make the NHL which leads to individual selfish decision making and broken braindead plays
Playing a goalie in that setting and for reasons beyond that =/= NHL translation.
The teams are playing with spare parts whose skaters are trying to find & develop their game as well and if not they are plugs. For goalies at that level it’s more about finding and correcting weaknesses/habits of your technical game at the micro level(or literally building it from scratch depending on the goalie and goaltending dev/director), and your strengths should theoretically overpower players at that level and cheese your team to win games or inflate sv% if you are starter quality… but that doesn’t mean readiness like I’m saying and that also said if your style is a quiet game in the vein of commesso, or more athletic like askarov, strengths can backfire in a setting like that. It’s way more random, way less linear, your judgement and reads aren’t solid or ever the same, etc.
I’m not calling it peewee hockey comparatively but even for skaters developing and trying to confer nhl readiness, it would not really reflect the game the NHL is and playing in an nhl system against mutant level talent so instead of taking cues on the environment it’s typically more of a focus on refining your own game.
And lastly in this sort of instability and chaos of a league/team it makes it harder to compare goaltenders with stats like sv%
Where do the starters of today’s NHL rank on average amongst their AHL peers year over year? Could imagine they’re closer to the top, but id bet it’s random