The 2026 NHL Draft wrapped up in Buffalo on Saturday, with the hometown Sabres making five picks over the two-day draft.<\/p>\n
The Buffalo Sabres selected defenseman Daxon Rudolph and forward Ilia Morozov with the fourth and 20th overall picks on Friday.<\/p>\n
Rudolph played in 68 games with the Prince Albert Raiders of the Western Hockey League last season, scoring 78 points. The 6’3″, right-handed defenseman also\u00a0added 27 points in 19 playoff games.<\/p>\n
The 18-year-old will begin his freshman semester this fall with the reigning NCAA champions, the University of Denver Pioneers.<\/p>\n
“The defense in this draft is very elite, talented guys. I’m buddies with a lot of them,”\u00a0Rudolph said. “To be selected is a good feeling and something I’ll never forget.”<\/p>\n
Morozov, 17, scored 20 points in 36 games with Miami University this year. The 6’3, 200 lb. centerman hails from Moscow, Russia.<\/p>\n
Rounding out the Sabres’ draft picks were forwards Olivers Murnieks with pick 124, Doman Szongoth in pick 156 and\u00a0Dylan Dumont with pick 188.<\/p>\n
This draft comes after a historic season for the Sabres, ending the 14-year playoff drought and making it to the Eastern Conference Semifinals before falling to the Montreal Canadiens.<\/p>\n
Assistant general manager Jerry Forton spoke about the overall processs for this year’s draft.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We went through the exact same process this year as a year, that we would have had three picks or no picks in the first round, it certainly got a little bit interesting,”\u00a0Forton said. “I would have never predicted a month or two ago that we would be picking at 4four and 20.”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 NHL Draft wrapped up in Buffalo on Saturday, with the hometown Sabres making five picks over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5100],"tags":[1107,229,5133,5,40,4,2944,1108,4093,43],"class_list":["post-619295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-buffalo-sabres","tag-buffalo","tag-buffalo-sabres","tag-buffalosabres","tag-hockey","tag-news","tag-nhl","tag-rochester","tag-sabres","tag-spectrum-news-staff","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116895001035957909","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}