Jet Greaves earns first Canada win after AHL-to-NHL rise

Jet Greaves’ first win for Canada arrived in the kind of game that turns a good story into a statement. The former Cleveland Monsters goaltender got the start in Canada’s 5-3 opening victory over Sweden on May 15 at BCF Arena in Fribourg, Switzerland, then watched Connor Brown break a 3-3 tie early in the third period as Canada opened the 2026 IIHF World Championship with a result that mattered far beyond one roster spot.

For AHL readers, Greaves’ path is the point. Cleveland signed the undrafted 20-year-old Barrie Colts goalie to a two-year AHL contract in July 2021, giving him the first real foothold in pro hockey. Less than a year later, he had earned a three-year entry-level deal with the Columbus Blue Jackets on Feb. 20, 2022, and the climb kept rising from there as he moved from AHL opportunity to NHL games and now to the international stage in Team Canada colors for the first time.

That progression has made Greaves a clean example of what the AHL can still produce when development meets performance. In 2023-24, he helped the Monsters win their first division title, a run that included three road wins in less than 48 hours. Last season, he was named the AHL Player of the Week for the period ending Jan. 5, 2025, after going 3-0-1 with a 0.97 goals-against average and a .971 save percentage, including one shutout in four appearances for Cleveland. He was later recalled by Columbus during a season that showed he could hold his own for both organizations.

At 25, Greaves entered the 2026 tournament as part of a Blue Jackets pipeline that has kept feeding higher levels. Along with Denton Mateychuk on Canada’s roster and Mathieu Olivier representing the United States, he is part of three Blue Jackets organization members at the Worlds, a small but telling sign of how Cleveland and Columbus have built depth that now reaches onto the sport’s biggest stages.

The tournament runs through May 31 in Zurich and Fribourg, but Greaves already delivered the kind of opener that validates the route he took. An undrafted goalie from Cambridge, Ontario, came in through an AHL contract, earned an NHL path, and then posted his first win for Canada in a game that tied together the Monsters’ development work, the Blue Jackets’ pipeline and the AHL’s case for itself as a place where big-game goaltenders are still made.