The Buffalo Sabres and Zach Metsa have opted to extend their relationship through the 2027-28 season as the versatile defenseman signed a one-year, $900,000 extension with the team Friday.<\/p>\n
Metsa is slated to make $850,000 for the Sabres this season, his second in the NHL. The 27-year-old had two goals and four assists in 43 games for Buffalo while adding two goals and 13 assists in 15 games for the Rochester Americans. He also scored a goal in Buffalo’s 8-3 win at Montreal in Game 6 of the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.<\/p>\n
Metsa is scheduled to be part of the pregame autograph session Saturday at 4:30 in Sahlen Field as part of the Buffalo Bisons’ annual “Hockey Night at the Ballpark” celebration.<\/p>\n
Metsa played multiple roles on the Buffalo blueline last season, and figures to again serve as a No. 6-7 defenseman in the Sabres’ rotation. His plus-16 rating last season was the best in the NHL among defensemen who played fewer than 600 minutes played. Metsa averaged 10:58 per game, and the Sabres outscored their opponents by a whopping 24-8 margin when he was on the ice at 5 on 5.<\/p>\n
Metsa, the captain of Quinnipiac University’s NCAA championship team in 2023, signed a two-year AHL contract with Rochester as an undrafted free agent and led the Amerks with 39 assists in 2024-25. That prompted the Sabres to reward him with his first NHL contract last summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Buffalo Sabres and Zach Metsa have opted to extend their relationship through the 2027-28 season as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5100],"tags":[15950,1107,229,5133,71502,5,285,4,39236,1108,36854],"class_list":["post-656483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-buffalo-sabres","tag-atlantic-division-nhl","tag-buffalo","tag-buffalo-sabres","tag-buffalosabres","tag-central-illinois-flying-aces-players","tag-hockey","tag-national-hockey-league","tag-nhl","tag-quinnipiac-bobcats-men","tag-sabres","tag-zach-metsa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/117220568209818991","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656483","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=656483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}