The dog days of summer continue to roar onwards, and so we look ahead to the 2025-26 NHL season, which is now only a couple of months away. The Columbus Blue Jackets had a remarkable 2024-25 season compared to where many talking heads had predicted they would end up. Now with another summer of change for Ohio’s NHL club comes a new round of opportunity for players in the organization to grab a bigger piece of the action – and a big piece has opened up between the pipes.
It’s fitting that in a year when Paul McCartney is making his way to Nationwide Arena, someone with the same given name as the title of one of his hit songs will be getting a massive opportunity on the Blue Jackets. Jet Greaves, whose father Gerry may or may not have been as bold as the sergeant major, will be a regular member of the team’s goalie tandem for the upcoming campaign. It’s a massive step forward for the Cambridge, Ontario, native who has been the starting goalie with the American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate Cleveland Monsters for the last three seasons.
How Did Greaves Get Here?
The undrafted Greaves benefitted heavily from a dearth of goaltending prospects in the Blue Jackets organization and got more ice time with the Monsters than maybe he should have at the start of his professional career. I say that because it’s not like he had a particularly strong stint in junior. He spent two seasons on the Ontario Hockey League’s (OHL) Barrie Colts, tending the twine in two of their worst seasons in recent memory. He only won 20 games in 60 starts, held an .899 save percentage (SV%), and didn’t play a single playoff game for the team. Nothing particularly eye-popping there.
Regardless, Greaves began to form a relationship with the Blue Jackets. It began with an appearance at development camp in 2019. It was built on with a strong showing in a prospects tournament organized during the pandemic, in the midst of a lost season for Greaves since there were no OHL games, and culminated in a two-year AHL contract with the Monsters.
Related: The Inspiring Journey of Jet Greaves to the NHL
He took that opportunity and has continued to grow, becoming an AHL regular in 2021-22, a starter in 2022-23, winning 30 games in 2023-24, and a .920 SV% through 40 games in 2024-25. The hope is that he continues blossoming at the next level and becomes a real option between the pipes for the Blue Jackets. It would be a real success story for the team’s developmental staff.
Greaves’ Bar for Success in 2025-26
The bar of success for Greaves shouldn’t be to instantly step in and supplant Elvis Merzlikins as the starting goalie. While many believe Merzlikins is a lost cause, he’s shown to be an NHL-caliber goalie capable of a hot streak here or there. In a tandem situation, that can be serviceable. Greaves simply needs to provide another reliable option that they can count on for a stretch of games when Merzlikins is off his game, which is something they did not receive from Daniil Tarasov, Spencer Martin, or Joonas Korpisalo over the last three seasons.
It seems like he’s ready for the next step, as he showed quite well in a few appearances in April. In a five-game call-up to end the campaign, he only allowed four goals against, posted two shutouts, and held an almost infallible .975 SV%. During that stretch, he won all of his starts, which included two games against the regular season Eastern Conference-winning Washington Capitals. He was a massive reason why Columbus almost made the playoffs.
The Blue Jackets barely missed out on the playoffs in 2024-25, largely due to significantly below league-average goaltending. For 2025-26, if Greaves can start at least 30 games and play as reliably as he has, the Blue Jackets should have a real shot. If he exceeds those expectations and steals the starting job, that’s just the cherry on top. Put simply and to paraphrase the great McCartney, with the wind in his hair of a thousand skate laces, the Blue Jackets are hoping they can climb on Greaves’ back and go for a ride in the sky to their ultimate goal of the playoffs.
