Buffalo Sabres Claim Colten Ellis

The Buffalo Sabres have added one of the top netminders from the AHL last season off the waiver wire. According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the Sabres have claimed netminder Colten Ellis from the St. Louis Blues.

All of a sudden, the Sabres have accumulated a relatively solid crop of goaltending depth. The team is expected to be without regular starter Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen through the first couple of weeks of the regular season. Still, they’ll have three NHL-caliber netminders, all acquired this offseason, to hold down the fort. And that’s without factoring in Devon Levi.

Unfortunately, unlike Alex Lyon and Alexandar Georgiev, along with Levi, Ellis has no NHL experience to rely on. Should he appear for the Sabres over the next few weeks, it would become his NHL debut after spending the last four years within the Blues organization.

Ellis came to the Blues as the 93rd overall selection of the 2019 NHL Draft, coming from the QMJHL’s Rimouski Océanic. After one more year with the Océanic and another with the Charlottetown Islanders, he made his professional debut in the 2021-22 campaign.

His AHL tenure didn’t get off to a positive start, leading him to spend much of his first two years in the ECHL. Still, he came into his own last year, managing a 22-14-5 record in 42 games with a .922 SV% and 2.63 GAA, including three shutouts.

It’s difficult to argue that Ellis is better than Lyon or Georgiev at this stage. Though the latter’s shaky performance last season could open up an opportunity for Ellis should he falter out of the gates. Still, by adding Ellis today, Buffalo now has seven netminders signed to NHL contracts for the 2025-26 campaign, meaning their goaltending carousel could be far from over for this season.