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.
Well.. I guess No Carter Hart for the Sabres….. cripes….I would have brought back James Reimer…he was halfway decent last year…even though…he is well into his 30’s …at least he was solid
This makes me furious. He won’t get NHL minutes, won’t get starter minutes in the AHL. This makes no sense especially with the net minding depth they have it makes me mad to waste Ellis like this. If they send him down, I expect the Blues to pick him back up bc they have no competent netminders behing Binner and Hofer anymore or he goes somewhere else. Staying on the St. Louis side of things. What the heck are they gonna do?
Hope the top 2 stay healthy?
*I’m* growling, if only because Ellis was great for Springfield last year, and Zherenko stunk out the joint; by some evil happenstance, Zherenko was in the net for every damn game I attended, and they lost all but one of them.
How do you know? Maybe Buffalo wants some more AHL depth. Outside of Lyons the Sabres don’t have anything outside of Levi if injuries to UPL continues or they want another depth option to turn to.
Behind Luukkonen, they have georgiev, Lyon, and Ellis. Georgiev stinks and should be the AHL backup behind Levi. Lyon plays starter while Luukkonen is out and Ellis is backup makes sense to me but we’ll see.
Ellis is a interesting gamble for the Sabres. If he ends up getting into a few games and looks good UPL could be available in a trade as long as Lyons is also looking good. Ellis, Levi & Lyons are all signed for next season for around $3.2mil total. Ellis and Levi will also be RFAs as well. Georgiev is just a low cost risk for Buffalo who can be buried in Rochester.
Why in the world did the blues waive him to keep zharenko and cranley? Both are far inferior to ellis
Neither Cranley nor Zherenko has enough professional experience yet to require waivers. Ellis does.
Thanks for the info! You’re knowledge is always appreciated. I honestly had no idea. Figured zharenko had been around longer.
Ellis has one pro year on Zherenko, and that made the difference. Zherenko will need waivers next season
And unless he improves markedly, good riddance