The Tampa Bay Lightning shipped goaltender Jonas Johansson to the Ottawa Senators on Friday night, and they asked for nothing in return.
No pick. No prospect. Just a 31-year-old netminder heading north with one season left on his deal.
Johansson is in the second and final year of a contract that carries a $1.25M cap hit. He's set to hit unrestricted free agency in 2027.
Does the price tag even matter? Not much, because he already cleared waivers and his cap hit drops to $25K whenever he's assigned to the minors.
That flexibility is exactly what Ottawa was hunting for. The Senators needed a third goaltender after Merilainen was claimed on waivers earlier in the day.
So Steve Staios picked up the phone, and Tampa Bay was more than willing to clear a body out of its crease.
A third goalie is a spare tire. Nobody thinks about it in September, and everybody's yelling for it by February.
Ottawa hands its third goalie job to a 6-foot-5 journeyman
Johansson has 105 NHL appearances with stops in Buffalo, Colorado, Florida and Tampa Bay. The career numbers read like a journeyman's: a 3.29 GAA and an .889 save percentage.
He's 43-36-14 over his NHL career with four shutouts. Nobody mistakes that for a starter's résumé, but teams keep finding a use for him.
The Tampa stretch was his steadiest. He logged 26 games in 2023-24 and 19 the following season.
Last season he went 11-10-2 with a .892 save percentage. Those are workable numbers for a backup and luxury numbers for a No. 3.
Colorado got the best version of him. He posted a .932 save percentage in three games for the Avalanche in 2022-23, a tiny sample but a real one.
The Gavle, Sweden, native carries 217 pounds on that frame and covers a lot of net before he even moves.
Here's the part that should bother Senators fans. Ottawa lost a goalie to the waiver wire and replaced him with one Tampa Bay was happy to give away.
Grabbing a replacement the same afternoon your No. 3 gets claimed looks a lot more like damage control than a plan. That's a bad look for a front office.
For Julien Brisebois, the math is simple. Andrei Vasilevskiy and Dennis Hildeby were both on the sheet for Thursday's 5-3 preseason loss to Florida.
The Senators aren't exactly rolling either. Wednesday's 4-2 loss to Toronto stretched their preseason skid to three games without a win, and Montreal visits Saturday.
The Lightning get their first crack at Ottawa on November 27 in Tampa. Johansson could be anywhere by then.
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The regular season opens October 3 in Toronto. Whether Johansson is riding buses in the minors or wearing a ballcap on the NHL bench depends on how long Ottawa's top two stay healthy.
Did the Senators botch their goalie depth by losing Merilainen on waivers and settling for Jonas Johansson?
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61 players hit NHL waivers today, and a few of the names are hard to believe
