When were the Utah Hockey Club players drafted? – Deseret News

On Friday and Saturday, the names of NHL candidates from all over the world will be called and their future in professional hockey will be determined – at least for a while.

The two-day NHL Draft begins Friday at 5 p.m. (MDT) at the Sphere in Las Vegas and the Utah Hockey Club has the sixth pick in the first round, with 12 more picks to follow over the course of the seven-round draft, subject to transfers.

Some of the drafted players could develop into stars of the UHC. Others will never play for Utah’s new NHL franchise.

Some were added to the squad as promising talents, others as projects and still others as extreme outsiders.

But every decision made by the Utah Hockey Club over the next two days will be analyzed and scrutinized, as it will officially be the first one to go down in the franchise’s record books.

However, because so much emphasis is placed on design, team building can be something of a mad science experiment.

To understand this, you just have to look at UHC’s current roster.

How many players from the Utah Hockey Club roster were drafted by the team?

Based on the 2023-24 roster – which is in flux as the free agent signing period begins July 1 – Utah’s NHL team is a mix of homegrown and loaned players.

Six current UHC players were drafted by the club – centers Logan Cooley and Barrett Hayton, left wingers Julian Lutz and Matias Maccelli, right winger Clayton Keller and defenseman JJ Moser. Another left winger – Michael Carcone – was not drafted but has only played in the NHL for Arizona.

Of those six, three were first-round draft picks – Cooley, Hayton and Keller – while two others – Lutz and Moser – were second-round picks. Maccelli was selected in the fourth round.

How many first-round picks were on the Utah Hockey Club roster last season?

In total, UHC boasts seven former first-round picks, including three players who finished in the top 10 – a No. 3 pick (Cooley), a No. 5 pick (Hayton) and a No. 7 pick (Keller).

Not coincidentally, Keller was the team’s only All-Star last season after scoring 33 goals and 76 points.

Cooley, meanwhile, scored 20 goals.

Another former first-round pick – Lawson Crouse, selected No. 11 by the Florida Panthers in 2015 – also scored 20 or more goals, as did Nick Bjugstad, selected No. 19 by Florida in 2010.

Arizona has made a point of investing in and signing young scorers, and it has obviously paid off.

Only one of Utah’s seven former first-round picks is a pure defenseman: Juuso Valimaki of the Calgary Flames in 2017.

How many second-round picks were on the Utah Hockey Club roster last season?

Four UHC players were selected in the second round – Lutz, Moser, Travis Dermott and Sean Durzi.

The first two were drafted by Arizona, while Dermott was drafted by Toronto in 2015 and Durzi was drafted by the same club three years later.

Utah Hockey Club general manager Bill Armstrong has spoken about the need to expand UHC’s blue line – another word for defense – and the franchise has spent picks to do so in recent drafts (Arizona took defenseman Dmitry Simashev with the No. 6 overall pick last year).

So far, those efforts have not paid off, but even without the influx of young talent, four out of five UHC defensemen were drafted in the first or second round last year.

How many third-round picks were on the Utah Hockey Club roster last season?

Third-round picks are not nearly as well represented at UHC as first- or second-round picks, which is understandable given the rate at which draft picks actually make it to the NFL.

Overall, UHC had only two third-round players on the roster for the 2023/24 season – center Jack McBain (signed from the Minnesota Wild in 2018) and goaltender Connor Ingram (signed from the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2016).

Ingram was Arizona’s best goalie last year, splitting time with Karel Vejmelka. McBain had by far his best season at the NHL level, establishing himself as a good center, but not the team’s best.

What about selection in later rounds?

UHC has a handful of players on the roster who were not high-profile draft picks.

This includes two centers – Travis Boyd (a sixth-round pick in 2011 by the Washington Capitals) and Alex Kerfoot (a fifth-round pick in 2012 by the New Jersey Devils).

Maccelli was selected in the fourth round and has definitely exceeded expectations for a player draft he was a part of.

Defenseman Josh Brown was selected by Florida in the sixth round in 2013 and Vejmelka – the other goaltender – was selected by the Nashville Predators in the fifth round in 2015.

What to look out for in the 2024 NHL Draft

Based on the current roster alone, Utah’s selections in the first and second rounds of the draft have the best chance of proving to be important contributors to the franchise in the future.

But the way team building works, many of the Utah Hockey Club’s key players will likely have been drafted by another team in the future, so any first or second round picks from the next two days could be of interest to UHC in the future.

And it’s the tantalizing future of the Utah Hockey Club as the franchise undergoes a long-term rebuild.