The Buffalo Sabres have added a forward who is coming off the most productive season of his pro career.
On Thursday, the team signed winger Aidan McDonough to a one-year, two-way contract. The deal carries an NHL cap hit of $850,000.
McDonough, 26, put together 23 goals and 21 assists for 44 points in 65 games last season with the Pittsburgh Penguins’ AHL affiliate, the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. That was the strongest statistical run of his professional career.
A Milton, Massachusetts native, McDonough entered the league as a seventh-round pick of the Vancouver Canucks in the 2019 NHL Entry Draft after being selected out of the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders of the USHL. He then spent four years at Northeastern University, where his role kept growing: alternate captain in his junior season, captain in his senior year.
His college production was steady and loud - 66 goals and 58 assists for 124 points in 124 games, a point-per-game pace over his Northeastern career.
McDonough got his first NHL action at the end of the 2022-23 season, appearing in six games for Vancouver and scoring one goal. His first full season as a pro came in 2023-24 with Abbotsford, where he posted 11 goals and eight assists for 19 points in 58 games.
He spent the next season on an AHL deal with the Charlotte Checkers before injuries cut his 2024-25 campaign to 16 games. Even in that shortened stretch, he managed 10 goals and six assists for 16 points. He later signed a one-year AHL deal with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in July of 2025.
Listed at 6-foot-2 and 201 pounds, McDonough brings size and hockey sense, though skating remains the part of his game that isn’t as strong.
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