The Sharks signed Kesselring to a three-year contract with an annual-average value of $4.5 million on Sunday, sources confirmed to Sportsnet.<\/p>\n
San Jose traded the 20th-overall pick in Friday’s NHL Draft to the Buffalo Sabres in exchange for Kesselring and the 27th pick.<\/p>\n
Buffalo selected forward Ilia Morozov with the 20th pick while the Sharks used No. 27 as part of a package to trade up again and take defenceman Ryan Lin at No. 21.<\/p>\n
Kesselring was limited to just 34 regular-season games in 2025-26, recording just two assists. Prior to that, he had a career-best season in 2024-25, playing all 82 games for the Utah Mammoth, potting seven goals and 29 points.<\/p>\n
He was acquired by Buffalo alongside Josh Doan in the 2025 off-season in the deal that sent JJ Peterka to Utah. <\/p>\n
\u201cMichael has a big frame with solid two-way ability,\u201d said Sharks general manager Mike Grier in a statement on Wednesday. \u201cHe is a responsible player in the defensive zone with a well-rounded offensive game, and will be a good upgrade for us patrolling the blue line. We\u2019re happy to have him a part of the organization.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sharks signed Kesselring to a three-year contract with an annual-average value of $4.5 million on Sunday, sources…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-767901","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\/767901","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=767901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}