{"id":46041,"date":"2025-08-05T02:43:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T02:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/46041\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T02:43:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T02:43:08","slug":"islanders-sign-top-pick-matthew-schaefer-entry-level-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/46041\/","title":{"rendered":"Islanders sign top pick Matthew Schaefer entry level contract"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK &#8212; &#8211; The <a data-clubhouse-guid=\"dab46111-bd72-868c-eff2-340e3cfc4d62\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/team\/_\/name\/nyi\/new-york-islanders\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New York Islanders<\/a> have signed No. 1 draft pick Matthew Schaefer to a three-year, entry level contract.<\/p>\n<p>The team announced the deal Monday right around the time the young defenseman threw out the ceremonial first pitch prior to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/team\/_\/name\/nym\/new-york-mets\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New York Mets&#8217;<\/a> home game against the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/team\/_\/name\/cle\/cleveland-guardians\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cleveland Guardians<\/a>. Schaefer is set to turn 18 next month just before training camp begins.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Feels amazing,&#8221; Schaefer said at Citi Field. &#8220;Obviously, it&#8217;s something I&#8217;ve wanted to do my whole life and to do it your first year &#8212; there&#8217;s 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&#8217;s going to be a lot of hard work that comes with it, but I think I&#8217;m ready.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Signing him to a contract doesn&#8217;t 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<p>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&#8217;s world junior summer showcase.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think that was massive for me to get hose games in and get those reps in because obviously I haven&#8217;t played in quite some time,&#8221; Schaefer said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK &#8212; &#8211; The New York Islanders have signed No. 1 draft pick Matthew Schaefer to a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-46041","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\/46041","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=46041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}