Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR Sports Radio 550) – The Buffalo Sabres seem to like having college hockey players in their system.<\/p>\n
From their latest NHL Draft this past June, sixth-round forward Ashton Schultz is heading to the University of North Dakota, while two of their three seventh-rounders, forwards Melvin Novotny and Ryan Rucinski, are heading to UMass and Ohio State, respectively.<\/p>\n
From the 2024 NHL Draft, second-round defenseman Adam Kleber plays at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, while third-round forward Brodie Ziemer goes to the University of Minnesota. Many have been raving about fourth-round defenseman Luke Osburn, who is set to play his freshman season at the University of Wisconsin, as is seventh-round forward Vasily Zelenov.<\/p>\n
Buffalo\u2019s other fourth-round pick in 2024, defenseman Simon-Pierre Brunet, is attending Merrimack College, while 2024 sixth-round defenseman Patrick Geary from Hamburg is at Michigan State University.<\/p>\n
Geary is teammates with 2023 second-round pick Maxim Strbak. The defenseman from Slovakia is 6-foot-2 and 203 pounds, and is a right-shot defenseman, which is what the Sabres needs to develop.<\/p>\n
Over his two seasons with the Spartans, Strbak has played decent, but he may have been passed by Kleber, who is 6-foot-6 and 225 pounds.<\/p>\n
Kleber has proven to be a good skater that defends well, and is also a good passer on the breakout. However, he won\u2019t wow you with his offensive abilities.<\/p>\n
After two seasons in the United States Hockey League and playing last year with the Bulldogs, Kleber felt he improved significantly.<\/p>\n
“I feel like I got better as the season went on, and the team got better and better,” said Kleber following practice at last month’s Sabres Development Camp at Harborcenter.<\/p>\n
There were a couple of particular areas in Kleber’s game where he felt improvement.<\/p>\n
“I think putting on strength and being able to be a little faster to play at that pace, and I think the more games you get, the more games and experience you get, you feel a little more comfortable out there,” Kleber assessed.<\/p>\n
Kleber, Ziemer and Schultz all played together as kids in Minnesota, so attending Sabres Development Camp meant they knew guys right away.<\/p>\n
“Ziemer and I have known each other since third grade, and we grew up playing together. He\u2019s a really great guy. I think he\u2019s pretty underrated. I think he had a really good year this year, is a really good 200-foot guy, and is a great leader too,” Kleber said.<\/p>\n
“With Schultz, I also played Pee Wee with him, and I\u2019ve known him from a young age. Him, Ziemer and I were all on that team, so it\u2019s kind of cool to see him get drafted this year. I think he\u2019s a really smooth player and skater, he\u2019s good with the puck and creative, so there\u2019s a lot to like there.”<\/p>\n
In 57 games with the Chicago Steel last season, Schultz scored 14 goals and added 25 assists for 39 points.<\/p>\n
Both Kleber and Ziemer attended Sabres Development Camp last summer too, and having so much in common with the other college players, he says it was nice to be around them.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s good to talk to them and hear what they had to say about where they played, share stories, and see how you measure up against top players from other teams,” Kleber said.<\/p>\n
The Sabres Prospects Challenge starts on Sept. 12, but the team’s college prospects will all be in school and can\u2019t play. That\u2019s the one thing the big defenseman regrets.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s different for college guys. We don\u2019t have that opportunity to be in the Prospects Tournament, so I just want to leave a good impression here because we don\u2019t get seen as much as the CHL guys,” Kleber said.<\/p>\n
Can’t also forget this year\u2019s first-round pick Radim Mrtka as a huge, right-shot defenseman. It may be tough seeing a path for Mrtka, Kleber and Strbak to all make the Sabres’ roster one day unless there are other trades.<\/p>\n
All three seem to be very promising prospects, which means general manager Kevyn Adams can use one or two of them as currency in future trades to bring in proven players.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR Sports Radio 550) – The Buffalo Sabres seem to like having college hockey players in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-85809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85809","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=85809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}