This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Linus Ullmark

A .9089 in 44 games in his first season in Ottawa, two years on from a Vezina and a .9375.

Season	Team	GP	W	L	OTL	GA	GAA	SO	SA	SV%

2015-16	BUF	20	8	10	2	49	2.60	0	565	.913
2016-17	BUF	1	0	1	0	3	3.06	0	36	.917
2017-18	BUF	5	1	2	0	8	2.00	0	123	.935
2018-19	BUF	37	15	14	5	109	3.11	2	1146	.905
2019-20	BUF	34	17	14	3	91	2.69	1	1066	.915
2020-21	BUF	20	9	6	3	49	2.63	0	591	.917
2021-22	BOS	41	26	10	2	95	2.45	1	1140	.917
2022-23	BOS	49	40	6	1	91	1.89	2	1457	.938
2023-24	BOS	40	22	10	7	103	2.57	2	1207	.915
2024-25	OTT	44	25	14	3	112	2.72	4	1229	.909
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	291	163	87	26	710	2.54	12	8560	.917

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

25-14-3 in 44 games with a .9089, a 2.72 average and 4 shutouts, facing 1,229 shots.

The club’s goaltending at five-on-five came in 6.3 goals worse than the chances faced, 21st in the league, in front of a defence that was 6th at suppressing them. That is the wrong way round, and it is a large part of why a club with a top-six defensive structure was outscored 131-148 at even strength.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 223 and he takes up a great deal of the net simply by standing in it. The style is deep and square: he sets at the top of the crease rather than out in the shooter’s face, and he lets the size do the work.

The glove is good and the recovery across the crease is where the size costs him — a second chance from the far post is harder for him than for a smaller goaltender. The rebound control is the ordinary part, and behind a defence that gives up few chances, a disproportionate number of the ones he faced were the second and third look at a play. He handles the puck well and starts breakouts with it, which matters on a club whose third pair struggles to exit.

The Mental Game

He was excellent in Boston and he has been ordinary here, and the honest reading of that is that a .9375 behind the best defensive club of its era was never going to travel intact.

44 starts is a full workload and he did not lose the job at any point in the season. The first playoff series of his Ottawa career was a six-game loss in which the club was in every game.

The Intangibles

A sixth-round pick in 2012 — 163rd overall — who spent six seasons in Buffalo before Boston, and won the Vezina Trophy in 2023 on a 40-6-1 record and a .9375.

291 games and a career .9171, and he was traded to Ottawa in the summer of 2024. He is 32 and the contract has years left on it.