Blue Jackets’ Jet Greaves Playing Into Team’s Future Plans

The Columbus Blue Jackets’ regular season has been over now coming up on a couple of weeks now. But meaningful hockey within their organization is about to ramp back up.

The Cleveland Monsters are still waiting to find out who their opponent will be in the second round of the AHL Playoffs. As of this writing, the Belleville Senators and Toronto Marlies are tied 1-1 in their best-of-three series. The winner of Game 3 will advance to take on the Monsters.

How were the Monsters able to win their division despite so many things happening to their roster throughout the season? A big reason for that is the performance of goaltender Jet Greaves. Don’t look now, but he might be making his way into the Blue Jackets’ plans sooner rather than later.

Greaves Carried the Monsters

To give some perspective on the season Greaves has put together, it wouldn’t be stretch to say he’s the best goaltender the Monsters have had in their team history. A look at some of the numbers back that up.

Greaves finished the regular season with a record of 30-12-4. Those 30 wins marked a franchise record for wins in a season for a Monsters’ goaltender. He accounted for 30 of the team’s 40 wins on the season.

Greaves earned his 61st win in his AHL career which is the Monsters’ all-time record for goaltending victories. He got to that level by winning the team’s final three games in a span of three days.

The Monsters won the North Division thanks to a 36-35 edge in regulation and overtime wins over the Rochester Americans. That meant Greaves needed to win all three games to make that happen. His three wins helped earn him AHL Player of the Week honors.

Greaves Earned NHL Time

Once the Blue Jackets put Spencer Martin on waivers, that left both Elvis Merzlikins and Daniil Tarasov as the goalies for the rest of the 2023-24 season. But with injury and illness came opportunity. For Greaves, that meant getting his shot in the NHL.

Greaves earned three NHL wins on the season. In those wins, his save percentage was not below .927. Because of the Blue Jackets’ defense, he generally saw a lot of shots which inflated his goals-against totals. He still managed to finish with a .908 save percentage in the NHL this past season.

But the thing that made Greaves stand apart was not only the way he hung in games when there were a ton of shots, but it was the attitude…