The team announced the deal Monday right around the time the young defenseman\u00a0threw out the ceremonial first pitch\u00a0prior to the Mets\u2019 home game against the Cleveland Guardians. Schaefer is set to turn 18 next month just before training camp begins.<\/p>\n
\u201cFeels amazing,\u201d Schaefer said at Citi Field. \u201cObviously, it\u2019s something I\u2019ve wanted to do my whole life and to do it your first year \u2014 there\u2019s still a lot of work, but that was my dream and I want to play in the NHL this season. I wanted to really badly. I know there\u2019s going to be a lot of hard work that comes with it, but I think I\u2019m ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
Signing him to a contract does necessarily mean Schaefer is guaranteed to play this season in the NHL. The Islanders could decide to send him back to the Erie Otters of the Ontario Hockey League.<\/p>\n
Representing Canada at the world junior championships in late December and early January is also a possibility. Schaefer broke a collarbone in the tournament last year, ending his season, and recently got back on the ice at Canada’s world junior summer showcase.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that was massive for me to get those games in and get those reps in because obviously I haven\u2019t played in quite some time,\u201d Schaefer said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The team announced the deal Monday right around the time the young defenseman\u00a0threw out the ceremonial first pitch\u00a0prior…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-45950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}