- Jet Greaves says his arbitration standoff with Columbus never turned personal
- The two sides settled on a three-year, $15 million deal hours before the hearing
- Read below for his full comments on the process and the $4.7 million filing gap
Jet Greaves got within hours of an arbitration hearing last month. He says none of it turned ugly.
The Blue Jackets goaltender joined Jeff Marek on Thursday’s episode of The Sheet and walked through the days before a hearing that never happened. Marek asked what was running through his head the night he was set to walk into that room.
“It is such a unique situation, really. There’s nothing that I can really compare it to, where you know in the next 24 to 48 hours, everything is going to be sorted out, but just not knowing at all, really, how it’s going to play out. I was grateful with the way the negotiations went with our team. It was super respectful throughout, even as we got close to the hearing. I don’t think there was any strain on the relationship from either side at all.”
Watch the full conversation:
Columbus and Greaves agreed on a three-year, $15 million contract a few hours before the hearing was scheduled to start. The $5 million cap hit runs through 2028-29.
Closing that gap took some doing. Greaves filed at $7.5 million and the Blue Jackets came back at $2.8 million, a $4.7 million split that Elliotte Friedman reported on July 21.
We had both filings the morning they came in:
Nearly $5 million apart with a hearing on the calendar usually leaves a mark. The settlement landed almost exactly in the middle of the two filings.
He earned the raise the hard way. Undrafted out of Cambridge, Ontario, Greaves opened last season buried on the Columbus depth chart and finished it as the starter, going 26-19-9 in 55 games with a 2.60 goals-against average, a .908 save percentage and two shutouts.
Then he took the same job for his country. Greaves ran with Canada’s net at the 2026 World Championship and went 6-2 with a 1.88 GAA and .920 save percentage in a fourth-place finish, his first international tournament at any level.
Marek covered that stretch with him too, along with where Columbus goes from here:
A year ago Greaves was third on the Blue Jackets goalie depth chart. He got paid like a starter without ever having to sit across a table and listen to his own team argue why he was not one.
