Ottawa Senators placed goaltender on waivers in hopes of sending him to their AHL farm club in Belleville to start the season.

Steve Staios wasted no time addressing the Ottawa Senators’ need for another goaltender after losing Leevi Merilainen on waivers Friday.

Hours after Merilainen was claimed off waivers by the Vancouver Canucks, the Senators acquired Jonas Johansson from the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Johansson, 31, has played in 105 games since starting his National Hockey League career with the Buffalo Sabres in 2019-20.

After spending time with the Colorado Avalanche and Florida Panthers organizations, he joined the Lightning at the start of the 2023–24 season. In 25 games in 2025-26, he posted an 11-10-2 record along with a 3.29 goals-against average and a .884 save percentage.

He has already cleared waivers, so there will be no difficulty in sending him to Ottawa’s American Hockey League affiliate in Belleville. This gives the organization depth, and the Senators had identified Johansson as a possible acquisition candidate if they lost Merilainen.

Johansson was acquired for future considerations.

Merilainen, 24, was shelled for six goals on 27 shots in a preseason loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday. Meanwhile the Canucks are dealing with injuries in goal and need depth at that position.

The Senators took a chance by trying to get Merilainen through waivers, but the gamble didn’t pay off.

A lot of teams operate with goaltending departments and clearly somebody in Vancouver liked the idea of bringing in Merilainen.

If he had cleared on Friday, the 24-year-old Merilainen would have been assigned to Belleville. A third-round selection in the 2020 NHL draft, he struggled throughout last season and didn’t look good at all against the Leafs.

It should be noted that this doesn’t necessarily mean the end of Merilainen’s days in the Ottawa organization. If the Canucks try to send him to their AHL affiliate in nearby Abbotsford, B.C., the Senators would have the right to bring Merilainen back to Ottawa.

Head coach Travis Green told reporters before Merilainen was claimed that the Senators had no intention of keeping three goalies on their NHL roster. Linus Ullmark is their top netminder and Samuel Ersson was signed to a two-year deal to be the backup.

That left Merilainen, who has a one-way deal worth $1.1 million U.S., as the odd man out. You can’t keep three goaltenders happy and the only team to do it last season was the Stanley Cup-champion Carolina Hurricanes.

“That’s part of the league,” Green said after his club skated Friday at the Canadian Tire Centre. “You’ve got players that you sometimes put on waivers. You want a goalie that can play well. There is nothing else you can see or want to see. You want a goalie that can play well.”

This was the first time in his career that Merilainen had required waivers before being sent to the AHL.

He’s not the same goaltender who posted an 8-3-1 record with a 1.99 goals-against average and a .925 save percentage when Ullmark was out with a back injury in 2024-25.

The Senators brought in veteran James Reimer last season when Ullmark took a leave for mental health reasons because neither Merilainen nor Mads Sogaard could get the job done.

Fans will be upset that the organization lost Merilainen because they’ve watched the likes of Joey Daccord and Filip Gustavsson have success elsewhere. Daccord was picked up by the Seattle Kraken in the expansion draft and Gustavsson was traded to the Minnesota Wild.

Staios, the Senators’ president of hockey operations and general manager, would have to make this move one way or another before the final roster is declared at 5 p.m. on Monday.

The organization likely felt that teams may take a pass on Merilainen because there could be other goalies available on waivers on the weekend as teams try to get down to 23-man rosters.

The Senators felt that when they signed Merilainen to a one-way deal in June, he still had a future in the organization. They were hopeful he could carry the ball in Belleville this season and be ready when available because Ullmark has never played more than 50 games in his career.

The loss of Merilainen was a hit to the club’s depth.

The issue, of course, is if either Ullmark or Ersson gets hurt, then the Senators won’t have much to call upon in the organization.

Don’t be surprised if they sign Vadim Zherenko, 25, who was brought into Ottawa on a professional tryout for camp. He spent last season with the AHL’s Springfield Thunderbirds, the minor-league affiliate of the St. Louis Blues.