This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Elvis Merzlikins
Columbus Blue Jackets Goaltender
A .9073 in 59 games behind the highest rate of expected goals against in the league — and 18.7 goals worse than the chances the club faced.
| Season | Team | GP | W | L | OTL | GA | GAA | SO | SA | SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | CBJ | 33 | 13 | 9 | 8 | 71 | 2.35 | 5 | 919 | .923 |
| 2020-21 | CBJ | 28 | 8 | 12 | 5 | 69 | 2.77 | 2 | 825 | .916 |
| 2021-22 | CBJ | 59 | 27 | 23 | 7 | 178 | 3.22 | 2 | 1920 | .907 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 120 | 48 | 44 | 20 | 318 | 2.88 | 9 | 3664 | .913 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
59 games, 27-23-7, a .9073 save percentage and a 3.22 goals-against average, with 2 shutouts on 1,920 shots faced.
Columbus allowed 3.080 expected goals against per 60 at even strength, more than any other club in the league. He faced 1,920 shots, more than any goaltender on this roster has faced in a season, and the club finished 28th in goals against with 300.
Columbus goaltending came in 18.7 goals below the chances it faced, 26th in the league. That figure is the club’s, and he played 59 of the 82 games, so most of it is his. A .9073 in front of the worst defensive structure in hockey is not the same as a .9073 anywhere else — and the arithmetic still says the goaltending was worse than the shots deserved.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 190, and he is a reactive, athletic goaltender who plays deep and beats shots with his hands rather than by taking away the angle. The .9227 he posted as a rookie came from the same method, and so did the .9073.
Three seasons and 120 games, a career .9132. The rookie year is still the best of them by 15 points of save percentage.
The Mental Game
He was handed the job before the club had a defence to put in front of him, and the two seasons since have been a steady decline in save percentage against a steady rise in the chances allowed.
Nothing measured here separates a goaltender being overwhelmed from a goaltender declining, and 1,920 shots is a large sample of the first and a poor test of the second. The 3.22 goals-against average is a club figure wearing his name.
The Intangibles
Seventy-sixth overall in 2014, third round, and five seasons in Lugano before he crossed at 25.
He is 28. Columbus spent the summer buying offence — a winger who scored 115 points and a defenceman who hits — and the thing that was 26th in the league last season is the thing it did not address.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
“6-3 and 190, and he is a reactive, athletic goaltender who plays deep and beats shots with his hands rather than by taking away the angle.”