What did I miss when building openssh? cannot generate ecdsa key

[Michael Felt]

I am assuming this is a user error (and the bug, if any is in configure not
telling me how to activate it).

I regularly see a message:
Could not load host key: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key

And, obviously, I have never made the key before.

I tried the following:
./ssh-keygen -t ecdsa -fssh_host_esdsa_key -N ""
unknown key type ecdsa

However, the syntax says it is a known type

root at x064:[/data/prj/openbsd/openssh/openssh-6.8p1]./ssh-keygen -?
unknown option -- ?
usage: ssh-keygen [-q] [-b bits] [-t dsa | ecdsa | ed25519 | rsa | rsa1]
                  [-N new_passphrase] [-C comment] [-f output_keyfile]
...

What did I miss?

regards,
Michael Felt

p.s. make check|tests - they all passed.

p.p.s. - this is built against an ancient openssl, so maybe the problem is
there.
OpenSSH_6.8p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8k 25 Mar 2009

And, yes - I know I newer openssl is much better, but this is taking a
system where it is at - i.e., I assume openssl is not yet upgraded. will be
trying against openssl-1.something tomorrow.