This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Elvis Merzlikins
Columbus Blue Jackets Goaltender
An .8921 across 52 games, and the reason a club that finished 2nd in finishing missed the playoffs.
| 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 | CBJ | 30 | 7 | 18 | 2 | 110 | 4.23 | 0 | 889 | .876 |
| 2023-24 | CBJ | 41 | 13 | 17 | 8 | 130 | 3.45 | 1 | 1266 | .897 |
| 2024-25 | CBJ | 53 | 26 | 21 | 5 | 168 | 3.18 | 1 | 1557 | .892 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 244 | 94 | 100 | 35 | 726 | 3.20 | 11 | 7376 | .902 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
26-21-5 in 53 games, .8921 with a 3.18 average and 1 shutout on 1,557 shots.
Columbus finished 2nd in the league in finishing, 29.4 goals above expectation, and 22nd in goaltending at 9.4 goals below it, and missed the playoffs by 2 points. The arithmetic is not subtle.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 190, and the game is athletic and scrambly rather than structured. He is quick and flexible and makes saves from broken positions, and he is square less often than a goaltender at this level should be.
The rebound control is the specific weakness and it has been for six years. He pushes pucks back into the slot and then has to make a second save, which is why his numbers collapse against clubs that attack the net front.
The Mental Game
He plays with visible emotion and it cuts both ways. The good nights are genuinely excellent and the bad ones unravel quickly, and there is a long record of both.
He was the goaltender who carried the club through the season after Johnny Gaudreau’s death, in circumstances no report can weigh properly, and he did not miss a start.
The Intangibles
Seven seasons in one organisation and one above-average save percentage among them, on a contract with real term.
The club has now spent four years hoping the 2019-20 season was the truth. It was not. At 31, behind a defence that is 26th at suppressing chances, this is a partnership that does not work and there is no obvious way out of it.
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.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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.
“The rebound control is the specific weakness and it has been for six years.”
“He was the goaltender who carried the club through the season after Johnny Gaudreau's death, in circumstances no report can weigh properly, and he did not miss a start.”