Columbus Signed Cam Talbot for $950,000 and Jet Greaves Just Became a 60-Start Goalie

Columbus has signed veteran goaltender Cam Talbot to a one-year contract worth $950,000, filling a backup job that opened when Elvis Merzlikins underwent shoulder surgery on August 17 and was ruled out indefinitely. The signing lands the week NHL training camps opened, and it confirms what fantasy managers should have been planning for since August: Jet Greaves is going to play an enormous number of games.

For a position where volume is the single largest driver of fantasy value, that is the headline. Not the veteran signing. The workload it implies for the 25-year-old who already had the job.

How the crease got here

Greaves locked down the starting role last season, appearing in 55 games with a .908 save percentage, and was rewarded with a three-year, $15 million extension on July 23. That contract and that workload together are an organizational declaration: Columbus believes it has a franchise goaltender.

Merzlikins was slated to handle backup duties behind him heading into 2026-27. That plan collapsed when he experienced discomfort during offseason workouts and required shoulder surgery. The team has not offered a return timeline beyond indicating he will not be back in the near future, which is the language organizations use when the answer is months rather than weeks.

Talbot enters his 14th NHL season with 567 games of experience. At $950,000 he is close to the league minimum, which is the correct price for a 1B goaltender who is not expected to challenge for the net.

What the workload projection actually looks like

Fifty-five appearances is already a heavy workload by modern standards, where most teams distribute closer to a 45-35 split. Remove the established backup and replace him with a 38-year-old veteran signed for depth, and the realistic range for Greaves climbs toward 58 to 62 appearances.

That number is what makes him a fantasy asset regardless of what happens to his rate statistics. Goaltender scoring in most formats is driven by wins, saves and shutouts, all three of which are counting statistics. A goalie who plays 60 games at a .908 save percentage will outscore a goalie who plays 42 games at .915 in nearly every roto format in existence.

The risk is the flip side of the same coin. A 60-start goaltender on a team that gives up a lot of shots accumulates losses and goals against just as efficiently as he accumulates wins and saves, and Columbus has not historically been a team that suppresses chances at an elite rate.

The Verdexed model take

The model's view is that Greaves is underpriced in fantasy drafts relative to his expected appearances and fairly priced relative to his expected rate statistics, which means the value depends entirely on your league's format.

In leagues that count wins and saves, he is a clear target and should be drafted ahead of several goaltenders with better underlying numbers on better teams, because those goaltenders are in timeshares. In leagues that weight save percentage and goals against average heavily, he is a trap, because volume actively hurts you when the rate statistics are merely average.

The .908 figure is the number to anchor on. It is close to league average and it was compiled across a large enough sample, 55 games, to be predictive rather than noisy. Projecting meaningful improvement would require believing either that Columbus improves defensively or that Greaves takes a step forward in his second full season as a starter. Both are possible. Neither should be assumed.

On the team side, the model treats the Merzlikins absence as a modest negative for Columbus's season-long win total, primarily through fatigue risk rather than through quality of play. A goaltender who plays 60 games in a compressed schedule is a goaltender whose March numbers frequently look worse than his November numbers.

Betting angle

The Columbus team total and win total markets have not moved meaningfully on the Talbot signing, and they should not have. A league-minimum backup does not change a team's projection.

Where the goaltending situation does create a betting edge is in the daily markets, specifically in games on the second half of back-to-backs. A team with a clear 1A and a clear 1B has predictable starter assignments, and Columbus has one of the clearest in the league now. Bettors and DFS players who track confirmed starters will find Columbus among the easier teams to project, which means the value gets arbitraged away quickly on the obvious spots.

The less obvious edge is in the games where Talbot does start. Markets that price a backup goaltender start uniformly across the league tend to under-adjust for the quality gap when the backup is a 567-game veteran rather than a career minor leaguer. Talbot starts against weaker opponents may represent better value than the standard backup discount implies.

What to do in your league

Draft Greaves as a mid-tier starter in wins-and-saves formats, and be willing to reach slightly past his consensus ranking. The certainty of the workload is worth paying for at a position where uncertainty is the norm.

Avoid him in ratio-heavy formats unless you have already secured two goaltenders with strong rate statistics and can afford to absorb the volume without damaging your percentages.

Talbot is not a fantasy asset in standard leagues and should not be drafted. In deep leagues with weekly transactions, he is a streaming option for the handful of games he starts, and nothing more.

The one scenario that changes everything is a Greaves injury. A 60-start goaltender carrying that kind of load is a meaningful injury risk, and the handcuff in that scenario would be a 38-year-old veteran with a starter's resume. Managers in deep leagues should know that and be prepared to move quickly.

What is next

Camp will establish the rotation, but the real information comes in the first month. If Columbus starts Greaves on both ends of a back-to-back in October, the organization is signaling a genuinely extreme workload and his fantasy value climbs again.

Merzlikins's status is the other variable. A return in the second half would cut into the workload projection, but shoulder surgery in mid-August with no timeline attached is not a situation that resolves quickly. Plan around his absence rather than his return.