The Jets have agreed to terms with one of their pending unrestricted free agents as they announced that they’ve re-signed goaltender Eric Comrie to a one-year contract. The one-way deal will pay him the league minimum of $750K.
The 26-year-old has certainly bounced around over the past two seasons. Between October of 2019 and mid-February of this year, he was claimed off waivers four times and traded once. Despite that, he played all of four NHL games in that stretch. While several teams wanted him, they preferred him solely as an insurance policy over someone that could be a regular backup goaltender.
Two of those waiver claims came this year and between that and the taxi squad, Comrie was limited to just five total appearances – one with New Jersey and four with AHL Manitoba where he posted a 1.23 GAA and a .947 SV%, numbers that were much better than his AHL career averages of 2.82 and .911, respectively.
Comrie has just five career NHL games under his belt but could very well be slotted in as Winnipeg’s backup goaltender behind Connor Hellebuyck next season. Laurent Brossoit is set to test the open market tomorrow while the recent acquisitions of Nate Schmidt and Brenden Dillon have cut into their cap space while they still have several restricted free agents to re-sign headed up by Neal Pionk. One way to save money is to have a cheap backup goalie which could work in Comrie’s favor. Otherwise, Comrie will at least have a one-way deal under his belt before seeing if he’ll bounce around the league again or make it back to the minors with the Moose.
TSN’s Darren Dreger was the first to report that Comrie had re-signed.