{"id":826975,"date":"2026-07-26T10:26:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T10:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/826975\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T10:26:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T10:26:13","slug":"ducks-sign-nikita-klepov-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/826975\/","title":{"rendered":"Ducks Sign Nikita Klepov \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ducks have signed their top pick from last month\u2019s draft.\u00a0 The team announced<\/a> that they\u2019ve signed winger\u00a0Nikita Klepov<\/a> to a three-year, entry-level contract.\u00a0 Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed by the team but PuckPedia reports<\/a> that it carries a $1.075MM cap hit, a $1.575MM AAV, and breaks down as follows.<\/p>\n

Year
\nNHL Salary
\nSigning Bonus
\nPerf. Bonus
\nAHL Salary<\/p>\n

Year 1 (TBD)
\n$922.5K
\n$102.5K
\n$500K
\n$87.5K<\/p>\n

Year 2 (TBD)
\n$967.5K
\n$107.5K
\n$500K
\n$87.5K<\/p>\n

Year 3 (TBD)
\n$1.0125MM
\n$112.5K
\n$500K
\n$87.5K<\/p>\n

Anaheim wasn\u2019t slated to pick that high on draft night as they came into the evening without a first-round selection.\u00a0 However, they picked up the 15th and 29th picks from St. Louis in a draft night deal that sent Mason McTavish<\/a> to the Blues.\u00a0 They used the 15th pick on Klepov and moved up from 29 to 28 to secure Marcus Nordmark<\/a>, who signed<\/a> his entry-level deal last week.<\/p>\n

Klepov had a dominant rookie season with OHL Saginaw last season.\u00a0 He played in 67 games, tallying 37 goals and 60 assists to not only lead the Spirit in scoring, but the whole league as well.\u00a0 He became the third player to do that and win Rookie of the Year in the same season, joining Patrick Kane<\/a> (who did so in 2006-07) and Jack Valiquette<\/a> (1973-74).\u00a0 He added five points in four playoff contests but that wasn\u2019t enough to avoid a sweep at the hands of Kitchener, who went on to win both the OHL title and the Memorial Cup.<\/p>\n

Back in 2024, Klepov had committed to play at Michigan State University for the 2026-27 season.\u00a0 However, that is no longer an option thanks to this contract.\u00a0 Given that he\u2019s unable to play full-time in the AHL next season, his options are to stay in junior with Saginaw or to play with Anaheim.\u00a0 If it winds up being the former, his contract will slide and still have three years left on it as long as he plays in nine or fewer games with the Ducks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ducks have signed their top pick from last month\u2019s draft.\u00a0 The team announced that they\u2019ve signed winger\u00a0Nikita…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":826976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[112867,766,49,48,183907,82,4584],"class_list":["post-826975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-2026-nhl-draft","tag-anaheim-ducks","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nikita-klepov","tag-sports","tag-transactions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826975","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=826975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}