San Jose Has Five Goaltenders Under Contract And Not One Of Them Can Be Sent Down For Free
Camp is reported to open Thursday with at most three goaltending jobs and five men signed to NHL deals. Every one of the five is 24 or older, and every one of them would have to be offered to the other 31 clubs before he could be sent to the Barracuda. That makes this the rare position where camp decides what San Jose is willing to lose rather than who is ready.
San Jose's youngest goaltender under contract is also the one who already has the job.
Yaroslav Askarov turned 24 in June. The four goaltenders behind him are Kyle Keyser at 27, Ilya Samsonov at 29, Alex Nedeljkovic at 30 and Eric Comrie at 31, and not one of the five can be sent to the American Hockey League without first being offered to the other 31 clubs.
| Goaltender | Age | 2026-27 cap hit | Term | Last season |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yaroslav Askarov | 24 | $2,000,000 | last year, restricted free agent in 2027 | 47 games, San Jose, .884 |
| Alex Nedeljkovic | 30 | $3,000,000 | two years | 40 games, San Jose, .896 |
| Eric Comrie | 31 | $1,150,000 | two years | 25 games, Winnipeg, .890 |
| Ilya Samsonov | 29 | $850,000 | one year, two-way | 14 games, HK Sochi, .903 |
| Kyle Keyser | 27 | $850,000 | one year, two-way | 15 games, Colorado Eagles, .922 |
Two on the opening-night roster is the normal number and three is the most any club carries. So two or three of these men are going to the Barracuda, and every trip there runs through a 24-hour window in which any other club can take the contract for nothing.
What eligible means here#
All five are waivers eligible, per PuckPedia's player pages read this morning. A club may move a waivers-exempt player to the minors and back as often as it likes and pay nothing for the decision. Exemption is not protection. It is the absence of a cost. When two players are close, the tiebreak is whichever answer is reversible, and an exempt man is always the reversible answer.
In the crease there is no reversible answer. Every one of the five costs the same thing to move, which is a 24-hour window and the chance that somebody takes him. That is why the goaltending decision is the one San Jose cannot walk back, and why it is worth more attention than the depth chart it will produce.
The money says which decisions are cheap. Comrie signed a two-year deal on July 1 that pays him $1,150,000 whether he is in San Jose or in the American Hockey League, which is a one-way contract and an unusual thing to hand a third goaltender. Samsonov's September 8 deal pays $850,000 in the NHL and $225,000 in the minors. Keyser's, signed July 2, pays $850,000 and $125,000. All three were signed by Mike Grier as free agents rather than acquired in a trade.
Read those three rows together and the ordering San Jose built is visible in the salary column before anybody skates. Comrie is being paid like a man the club expects to keep. The two on two-way deals are being paid like insurance. All three still have to clear waivers, so the ordering is a preference and not a plan.
The missing twenty-one-year-old#
Most clubs solve this by having a young goaltender signed. A 21-year-old on an entry-level deal is waivers exempt, rides the shuttle for free, and absorbs the third job at no risk. San Jose does not have one.
The league keeps a young goaltender signed. San Jose is on the far side of that
Each of the 32 clubs sorted by the age of the youngest goaltender it has under an NHL contract, standard and entry-level both, counted from a league contract table copied by hand from CapWages team pages and read on September 12, 2026. Bars are the number of clubs. The median club has a 21-year-old signed. Teal marks the group San Jose sits in.
Eight clubs in the league have no goaltender signed who is 23 or younger. San Jose is one of them, and its 24-year-old is not the prospect at the back of the depth chart. He is the man PuckPedia projects as the starter, and he made 47 of San Jose's 82 starts last season.
The goaltending the system is actually developing is not signed to anything. San Jose holds five goaltending draft picks and every one of them is unsigned, including Joshua Ravensbergen, taken 30th overall in 2025, whose signing deadline runs to June 1, 2029. None of them is in this camp and none of them could be.
Three arguments against me, and the second one is real#
One. Carrying three goaltenders is normal in September. True, and it is why nothing has to happen this week. The active roster is projected at 23 of 23 with $3,335,695 of space, so a third goaltender costs a skater's spot rather than money. This is a question about opening night and the weeks after it, not about the first day of camp.
Two. Nobody claims a backup goaltender in late September. This is the strong one. Samsonov was available to all 32 clubs for ten weeks of free agency and signed on September 8, for $850,000, after a season in Russia. That is direct evidence that the league already looked at him and passed at a lower price than a waiver claim, which costs a roster spot as well as the contract. Most clubs settle their crease in July.
Three. San Jose could trade one instead. It could, and that route stays open all month. A club that loses a goaltender in camp will pay something for a fifth man who is surplus here. What the route cannot do is wait, because the decision date is set by the roster limit and not by San Jose.
What camp actually decides#
Nothing in these four days will develop a goaltender, because there is no goaltender in the building to develop. Askarov is 24 and already has the job, with 63 NHL games to his name. The other four are finished products: zero NHL games for Keyser, 102 for Comrie, 200 for Samsonov and 219 for Nedeljkovic. The club knows what each of them is.
So the question camp answers is narrower than it looks. It is not who is ready. It is whether San Jose would rather risk Comrie, who is on a one-way contract it would keep paying in full in the minors, or Samsonov, who started 40 games for Toronto three seasons ago and has been out of the league for one.
Last season San Jose used three goaltenders and needed exactly three. Askarov made 47 starts, Nedeljkovic 34, and Laurent Brossoit made the other one. It has since signed three more and kept the two who were here. Brossoit is under contract in Anaheim this season, which is where San Jose opens the preseason on September 20.
What to watch#
Camp is reported to open Thursday, September 17, by San Jose Hockey Now, twice, and the club has not announced it. The first preseason game is September 20 at Anaheim and the opener is October 1 at home against Florida. Waiver placements are published, so the first real signal on all of this arrives before either game does, on a transaction wire rather than on the ice.
Five goaltenders, five contracts, and no free way down. Two of them will be somewhere else by October, and San Jose does not get to decide alone where.
Sources: PuckPedia's San Jose team page and the player pages for Askarov, Nedeljkovic, Comrie, Samsonov and Keyser, all read September 13, 2026, for ages, cap hits, terms, minors salaries, signing dates, signing status and waivers eligibility, and for the unsigned draft-choice list and the projected 23-man roster and cap space. The NHL's own roster and schedule endpoints for the 2026-27 San Jose roster, the four preseason dates and the October 1 opener, and its goaltending summary for San Jose's 2025-26 games and starts. The club's September 8 release for the Samsonov signing and his career record. The league contract table in this section's data, copied by hand from CapWages team pages and read September 12, 2026, for the goaltender ages of all 32 clubs; its San Jose, Toronto and Minnesota rows were checked against PuckPedia today and reproduce exactly. San Jose Hockey Now for the reported September 17 camp date, which the club has not confirmed.
