Reidler earns first AHL win as Senators top Crunch 6-4
Kevin Reidler turned a late-season tryout into a real Ottawa goaltending datapoint, then won his second AHL start with Belleville. The Senators got a look at a 6-foot-6 netminder who may be climbing fast.
Belleville’s biggest takeaway from Kevin Reidler’s two-start look is bigger than a single win. The Senators did not just find a fill-in for a late-season game, they got an early read on a 21-year-old goalie who suddenly looks like part of Ottawa’s longer-term goaltending discussion.
Reidler, a 6-foot-6 netminder from Gävle, Sweden, earned his first AHL victory in a 6-4 win over the Syracuse Crunch on April 17, his second straight start after making his professional debut two nights earlier. In that first outing, he stopped 26 shots but took a 3-0 loss to the Utica Comets at CAA Arena. Belleville came right back to him against Syracuse, and he rewarded that trust by getting the win while the Senators kept evaluating young players in the final stretch of the 2025-26 season.
The context around the results matters. Belleville’s win over Syracuse also featured first AHL goals from Blake Montgomery and Hoyt Stanley, turning the night into a meaningful development checkpoint, not just a box-score entry. Reidler was asked to play shortly before his debut against Utica, but he still handled the moment cleanly enough that the staff doubled down and gave him another start in the rematch with the Crunch.
That matters for Ottawa. Reidler was selected 151st overall in the 2022 NHL Draft, then signed a two-year entry-level contract on March 30 that begins in the 2026-27 season. He finished his NCAA season at Penn State with an 11-7-0 record, a 3.31 goals-against average and a .901 save percentage in 18 games, and Ottawa brought him to Belleville on an amateur tryout for the rest of this season to get a live look at what the organization has in the pipeline.
The first AHL win does not crown him anything, but it does change the conversation. Belleville showed enough trust to give him back-to-back starts, and Reidler showed enough poise to turn the second one into a result. With the season wrapping up, that is the kind of performance that can move a goalie from summer curiosity to genuine contender for a bigger Belleville role when next season opens.
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