Grier replaced an injured goaltender with one waiting on immigration

San Jose put five goaltenders on its training camp roster. San Jose has five goaltenders under NHL contract.

They are not the same five.

The camp list the club published on Wednesday runs to forty-eight names, and the goaltenders on it are Yaroslav Askarov, Eric Comrie, Alex Nedeljkovic, Matt Davis and Brady Knowling. The goaltenders San Jose is actually paying this season, per PuckPedia's cap sheet, are Nedeljkovic at three million dollars, Askarov at two million, Comrie at $1,150,000, and Ilya Samsonov and Kyle Keyser at $850,000 apiece.

Hold one list against the other and only three names sit on both: Askarov, Nedeljkovic and Comrie. The two signed goaltenders who are not at camp are the two cheapest on the sheet, which is to say the two the organization added as insurance. Standing in the crease instead are a twenty-five-year-old who played twenty-four games in the ECHL and two in the American Hockey League last season, and an eighteen-year-old the Sharks drafted this year and have not put under contract. (They have until June 2030 to sign him, so nobody is rushing.)

Mike Grier explained both absences on Thursday. It was the first day of camp, and it was also the first time anybody explained either one.

Keyser has an upper-body injury. "I wouldn't expect to see them for a couple months at least," Grier said, per Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now, the "them" covering Keyser and the forward Quentin Musty. Curtis Pashelka of the Mercury News carries the same phrase from the same availability. A couple of months from September 17 arrives somewhere in the middle of November.

Samsonov is not hurt. Samsonov is not here. Grier said he is waiting to be cleared by immigration, which both Peng and Pashelka reported, and which is the reason a goaltender the club signed on September 8 had not been on the ice ten days later.

Anyway. Walk the dates, because the order is where this gets good.

Keyser got hurt at some point nobody has established. Pashelka writes that it was not immediately clear when. Peng notes that Grier was not asked.

On September 8 the Sharks signed Samsonov to a one-year, two-way contract and put out a release about it. That release runs six paragraphs and five of them are biography: fourteen games for HK Sochi last season, six NHL seasons before that, a Gagarin Cup in 2016, two World Junior medals, the twenty-second pick in 2015. It does not mention Keyser. It does not mention an injury. Nowhere does it say why a club with four goaltenders already signed went and got a fifth in the second week of September. (It did find room for the 2014 under-18 tournament where he was named best goaltender. Twelve years ago. Still no reason.)

On September 16 the Sharks published a camp roster with neither Samsonov nor Keyser on it.

On September 17 the general manager stood up and connected the whole thing in about two sentences.

Now, the part that keeps this from being a crisis. None of it touches the crease that plays NHL games. Askarov, Nedeljkovic and Comrie are the three goaltenders San Jose was always going to dress, all three are signed, and all three were at Sharks Ice on Thursday morning. Peng said it plainly in his second sentence: "At the very least, it hasn't hit the big club yet." Keyser was Barracuda depth, and Peng says that in as many words too.

So nobody needs to go looking for a goaltender to start against Florida on October 1.

The thing is that depth is not for October. Depth is for the Tuesday in January when the backup pulls something in warmups and a club finds out what its fourth and fifth options actually are. That is the entire reason a team signs a fifth goaltender in the first place, and San Jose did sign one, and then signed another when the fifth got hurt, and on the opening day of camp it had three of them in the building.

The Barracuda open on October 3 against San Diego at Tech CU Arena, two days after the big club opens against Florida. Somebody has to play goal on both of those nights, and San Jose did prepare for the second one on paper the camp roster does not show. Davis re-signed with the Barracuda for this season and Connor Hasley signed an American Hockey League contract of his own, which puts two goaltenders on Barracuda paper before anybody is sent down. Hasley is not among the forty-eight names the Sharks published on Wednesday and does not have to be.

Count the contracts across both leagues and the organization holds seven goaltenders. What it does not hold is a fourth body at Sharks Ice if a third one goes down between now and the middle of November.

The goaltenders were not the only thing last weekend cost. Musty and Cam Lund were both hurt at the Rookie Faceoff, Lund on a high hit from Los Angeles defenseman Jared Woolley in the first period on Saturday, Musty at some point across the weekend. Grier has Lund out at least a month and through the start of the regular season. Both men were on Wednesday's camp roster. Both are near the front of the call-up line, the one Grier was describing when he said he wants Musty healthy so he can "be the next guy called up."

Grier added one more thing about Lund: "Got concussed last year in the rookie tournament." Second straight rookie tournament that has ended this way for him.

Filip Bystedt and Mattias Havelid missed Thursday too, both day-to-day, and Grier said both could rejoin camp later in the week. That is four men off a forty-eight-man roster on day one, before anybody has taken a hit in a scrimmage.

Grier spent the summer stacking this position. Five goaltenders, every one of them signed, one of them added this month for the specific purpose of covering the one who got hurt.

Three of them made it to the first day.

Called Shots#

San Jose adds another goaltender to the organization on or before November 15, 2026. November 15 is where Grier's own timeline on Kyle Keyser runs out, so it is the last day the club is still short on the general manager's word rather than on mine. Scored off official transactions only: any goaltender added to an NHL contract, to an American Hockey League contract with the Barracuda, or on a professional tryout, between September 18 and November 15 inclusive, is RIGHT. Signing Brady Knowling counts only if it is an entry-level NHL deal, since he is already San Jose property. A Wichita signing in the ECHL does not count, and neither does a recall, a reassignment, a waiver claim of a goaltender already in the system, or an emergency backup dressed for one night. The case for it is that clubs sign tryout goaltenders every October, and eight weeks of camp, preseason and six weeks of hockey across two leagues is a long time for seven men to stay healthy. The case against it, and it is the reason I am on this side, is that Grier already made this move: the Samsonov signing on September 8 was the response, the insurance is bought, the Barracuda have two goaltenders signed on their own paper, and the club still has three signed goaltenders in camp. I think they ride it out.

Sources: The Sharks' training camp release and roster, published September 16, 2026 at nhl.com/sharks, read September 18 for the forty-eight names, the five goaltenders, the camp schedule, the four preseason dates, the October 1 opener against Florida and the October 3 Barracuda opener against San Diego. The club's September 8, 2026 release announcing the Samsonov signing, read the same morning, for the one-year two-way term and for the absence of any stated reason. PuckPedia's San Jose cap sheet and signings page, read September 18, for the five goaltender contracts, their cap hits, Keyser's July 2, 2026 signing at one year and $850,000, and Brady Knowling's status as an unsigned draft choice. Sheng Peng, San Jose Hockey Now, September 17, and Curtis Pashelka, The Mercury News, September 17, both read at the original, for Grier's remarks on Keyser, Samsonov, Musty, Lund, Bystedt and Havelid. Matt Davis's and Brady Knowling's 2025-26 games and leagues are from the club's own camp roster. The San Jose Barracuda's own releases announcing Matt Davis's re-signing and Connor Hasley's American Hockey League contract for 2026-27, both read September 18, for the two goaltenders under Barracuda contract; the club's July "Nolly's Notes" column names the same two inside its American Hockey League goaltending mix.