Injuries hit the Grand Rapids Griffins in net, and they wasted no time in addressing the matter.
Following injuries to standouts Sebastian Cossa and Michal Postava, the Griffins brought in AHL veteran goaltender and two-time Calder Cup champion Dustin Tokarski on a professional tryout deal Thursday. It is a low-risk move for the 9-0-0-1 Griffins, who are getting much-needed goaltending insurance with someone who ranks ninth in AHL history with 227 wins.
In all, Tokarski is 227-154-41 in 444 regular-season AHL games. He is also 20-7 | 1.85 | .932 in the Calder Cup Playoffs. This is also someone who took on the pressure that comes with being Canada’s goaltender at the IIHF World Junior Championship. He led Canada to a gold medal in 2009 and also carried the Spokane Chiefs to their 2008 Memorial Cup title.
Cossa, taken in the first round of the 2021 NHL Draft by the first-round parent Detroit Red Wings, had been off to an excellent start. In four appearances, the 22-year-old Cossa went 4-0-0 | 1.75 | .939 in a tandem with Postava, a prospect in his own right. After winning the Czech Extraliga championship last season with HC Kometa Brno, the 24-year-old Postava had gone 4-0-0 | 2.15 | .936 starts with the Griffins.
But Cossa is out of the lineup with an undisclosed injury. So is Postava, who left eight minutes into a shootout loss at Chicago last Sunday afternoon after awkwardly stretching across the crease to stop a shot. Carter Gylander, up from the ECHL’s Toledo Walleye, finished that game in Chicago and then helped the Griffins past the visiting Toronto Marlies with a 3-2 overtime home win Wednesday morning.
A rematch with the Marlies is set for Friday night at Van Andel Arena (7 p.m. ET; FloHockey), the Griffins’ lone game this weekend.
2025 Toronto Marlies vs Grand Rapids Griffins
With recovery timelines for both Cossa and Postava still publicly murky, bringing in the 36-year-old Tokarski, a 16-year veteran with 86 NHL games to his name, means that they do not have to hand over all of the goaltending work to Gylander, a second-year pro. Gylander, 24, has played just five career AHL games, two of them in the past week.
Through a pro career that started in 2009-10 with the Norfolk Admirals, he has filled a variety of roles. The Tampa Bay Lightning selected him in the fifth round of the 2008 NHL Draft, and he turned pro having won a Memorial Cup championship and IIHF World Junior Championship gold medal and also taking the Stafford Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player in the 2008 Memorial Cup tournament. By his third pro season, he led Norfolk on an AHL-record 28-game winning streak and through the postseason to a Calder Cup championship.
While several members of that powerhouse Norfolk team, including head coach Jon Cooper, went on to significant success with Tampa Bay, Tokarski found his own path to one of the most scrutinized roles in all of hockey: a Montreal Canadiens goaltender in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
After Tampa Bay sent him to Montreal in February 2013, he eventually ended up with the Canadiens backing up Carey Price. When Price went down in the 2014 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Tokarski stepped in to face the New York Rangers in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Final and helped the Canadiens to push the Rangers to six games.
From there, though, Tokarski’s career began to take him across the NHL and AHL. He found himself back in the AHL for the 2015-16 season and then sent to the Anaheim Ducks organization, where he played just one NHL game. He went from the San Diego Gulls on to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms and Hartford Wolf Pack across the next three seasons.
Then came a revival for his career. With Hartford out of contention in the 2018-19 season and the Charlotte Checkers needing help for prospect Alex Nedeljkovic, the Rangers reassigned him on loan to Charlotte. He went 7-0-0 | 1.14 | .956 down the stretch for Charlotte and then filled in at times during the Calder Cup Playoffs. His 5-0-0 | 1.74 | .935 postseason line helped to lead the Checkers to their Calder Cup championship.
Like a lot of AHL veterans past the age-30 mark, Tokarski has cycled through several stops in his career’s second half. Since that Calder Cup championship spring run in Charlotte, he has gone on to stints with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, Rochester Americans, and Chicago Wolves. But he also spent the entire 2021-22 season with the Buffalo Sabres and played 29 games and added four more games for the Pittsburgh Penguins the next season.
But after a 24-game run with Rochester in 2023-24, he went unsigned the following summer. That summer of 2024 featured a difficult job market for goaltenders, and those challenges continued this past offseason as well.
So, this signing matches a similar trek that Tokarski took last season. Unsigned going into the 2024-25 campaign, he landed with the Wolves when they ran into early goaltending trouble. Injury problems had hit the Carolina Hurricanes and prompted Spencer Martin’s recall from Chicago. Tokarski took over in the Chicago crease and ended up playing 21 games for the Wolves. He resurfaced last season in the NHL, too, earning a deal with the Hurricanes and going to Carolina to make six appearances.
Where does this go for the Red Wings, Griffins, Tokarski, Cossa, and Postava? At some point, both Cossa and Postava will be ready to go, and the Detroit organization will have to decide how to rearrange its depth chart at both the NHL and AHL levels. Detroit is holding on to the Eastern Conference’s second wild-card spot at 10-7-0. But will they remain content with their goaltending? Does Cossa move up to Detroit at some point this season? The Red Wings will eventually have decisions to sort out. So will Tokarski, but a good run here could set him up well for an opportunity elsewhere.
But for now, at least, the Griffins once again have their goaltending picture set.
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