The 26-year-old struggled to stay in the Sabres lineup last season, only appearing in 34 regular-season games. Kesselring broke out in the 2024-25 season, recording 29 points and playing nearly 18 minutes per game with the Utah Hockey Club.<\/p>\n
It was a much-needed addition to the right side of the San Jose blue line, as the team only has two NHL-level defensemen under contract at the time of writing. His 6-foot-5 frame makes him a strong penalty-killing presence as well, something the Sharks struggled with at times last season.<\/p>\n
The Sharks have been rumored to be targeting a defenseman with the 20th selection in the draft, but the addition of Kesselring may erase some of that need. He is coming off a two-year, $2.8 million contract and is set to become a restricted free agent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 26-year-old struggled to stay in the Sabres lineup last season, only appearing in 34 regular-season games. Kesselring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":["post-366116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}