‘What a week,\u2019 another prospect proclaimed.<\/p>\n
What a week indeed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so excited,\u201d a stunned Kralovic said moments after signing his first NHL contract. \u201cI\u2019m so proud to be part of this organization, and my feelings right now, this is just incredible.”<\/p>\n
Kralovic\u2019s pact is a three-year deal. The 20-year-old defenseman will attend main camp this fall and begin his North American hockey career.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay selected Kralovic with the 90th overall pick in the 2026 NHL Draft last Saturday after he played 52 games of professional hockey for HC Slovan Bratislava in Slovakia this past season.<\/p>\n
He scored six goals and 31 points while posting a plus-17 rating last season. He also represented Slovakia at the 2025 IIHF World Junior Championship, collecting two assists.<\/p>\n
When Tampa Bay drafted Kralovic, members of the front office hadn\u2019t decided whether they would sign him immediately this summer. That changed after getting another extended look at his potential at this week\u2019s development camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe’s got raw potential because he wasn’t coached as much as he’s going to be coached in the future, but he’s got the skating, he’s got the puck movement,\u201d Tampa Bay director of player development JP Cote said. \u201cHe’s got a lot of things that we appreciated enough to make sure that we might as well do it now because we want him to be part of this organization moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kralovic shared the ice this week with multiple staff members from Tampa Bay\u2019s AHL affiliate, the Syracuse Crunch. That included Crunch general manager and head coach Joel Bouchard, who has been a fan of the 6-foot-3 defenseman for months.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, it’s an exciting signing. I like what he brings, I like the way he plays the position. To me, it’s very important. As a former defenseman in the NHL, I like the way he plays situations,\u201d Bouchard said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always can teach players how to get better, but it needs a foundation. He’s got a really strong foundation,\u201d Bouchard continued. \u201cWe had a good report on him and I watched him for a few games, and I was like, \u2018Yeah\u2026that\u2019s good.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Kralovic turns 21 in August and will likely spend even more time learning from Bouchard this upcoming season.<\/p>\n
He is already making a list of ways he can improve before then. He wants to be a better player than he is today when he arrives to his first training camp with Tampa Bay this fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I can be better in every aspect of my game, so this summer I\u2019ll be working on the fixes, and I want to be ready for camp,\u201d Kralovic said. \u201cToday is a big motivation for me to train harder, focus even harder.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘What a week,\u2019 another prospect proclaimed. What a week indeed. \u201cI\u2019m so excited,\u201d a stunned Kralovic said moments…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-330955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}