{"id":558931,"date":"2026-04-01T21:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T21:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/558931\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T21:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T21:24:08","slug":"sabres-sign-strbak-to-3-year-entry-level-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/558931\/","title":{"rendered":"Sabres sign Strbak to 3-year, entry-level deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Buffalo\u00a0Sabres\u00a0signed defenseman Maxim\u00a0Strbak\u00a0to a three-year, entry-level contract on Wednesday.\u00a0The contract begins with the 2026-27 season.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Strbak, 20,\u00a0was selected in the second round\u00a0(45th\u00a0overall)\u00a0in the 2023 NHL Draft and played 102 games in three seasons at Michigan State.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Strbak\u00a0guided the Spartans to three consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances\u00a0and\u00a0two Big Ten\u00a0Championships. He\u00a0recorded 46 points (8+38) with a plus-33 rating during his collegiate career.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s a hard-to-play-against, shutdown defender,\u00a0can\u00a0skate\u00a0really well,\u201d\u00a0Sabres\u00a0development coach Tim Kennedy told Sabres.com\u00a0last month. \u201cHe\u2019s\u00a0very physical and that\u2019s what we love about him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Kosice, Slovakia\u00a0native\u00a0had the second most points by a Michigan State defenseman this season with 18 in 37 games.\u00a0Strbak\u00a0was tied for 10th\u00a0in the Big Ten with a plus-20 rating and had 38 blocked shots.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He\u00a0represented\u00a0Slovakia at four IIHF World Junior Championships\u00a0and had 16 points (2+14) in 19 games. He finished tied for the most assists by a defenseman during the 2024 tournament (6).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Buffalo\u00a0Sabres\u00a0signed defenseman Maxim\u00a0Strbak\u00a0to a three-year, entry-level contract on Wednesday.\u00a0The contract begins with the 2026-27 season.\u00a0 Strbak, 20,\u00a0was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-558931","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}