Expect Utah Hockey Club To Be Active This Offseason
TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun joined Jay Onrait on SportsCenter and stated that the Utah Hockey Club will be busy this summer as look to sign free agents on short terms and build around the core as we wait for the name to be announced.
** NHLRumors.com transcriptions
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Jay Onrait: “The owner of the new Utah NHL franchise Ryan Smith was on the Pat McAfee show on TSN this week, and he says that they have narrowed the nickname for the potential team here down to four names. And he even said what two of the names were he said the Yeti and the Mammoth were two of the names.
First of all, what are your thoughts about either of those two names? Do you like them Pierre LeBrun?”
Pierre LeBrun: “I love the idea and let me tell you something, I think even if you traded for Austin Matthews tomorrow, the name of the team in Utah might be more interesting to a lot of people because that’s how big that story is right now. I’m kidding. They’re not trading for Austin Matthews. But you understand my point.
NHL Rumors: Utah Will Have Money and the Assets to Spend This Offseason
There is such a fascination for when Utah will finally get its name. And it’s worth mentioning this again that Ryan Smith told me this back in the hours after getting the Coyotes that he’s willing to start next season without a team name. If it takes that long to get the fan survey to work its way through so be it but there’s obviously a chance that will be figured out by then.
Well, you know, they might be the busiest team in the NHL this summer. They have more than $40 million of salary cap space. Jay, what would you do with more than $40 million in salary cap space?
I spoke with Bill Armstrong, the GM this week and the one thing he said is they’re not gonna get crazily carried away. They’re not going to be drunken sailors here with all that cap money. They are going to be aggressive.
They have holes to fill their entire blue line is unsigned Jay. They don’t have a single NHL defenseman sign right now on their roster. And that includes Sean Durzi who they have to re-sign?
But one of the things Bill Armstrong really, really, really stressed and yes, they’re going to poke away on July 1st and free agency. They’re going to use our cap space maybe, you know, trade for some guys some teams who need to create cap space, but they really want to stay respectful to the rebuild that they started three years ago.
NHL Rumors: Utah, and the Tampa Bay Lightning
They’re going into year four of this rebuild. They have a young core. So if they dip into free agency and they will, they want to go short-term, one, two, maybe a three-year deal. And what they want to do is if a player gets offered X amount of money over three years from another team, they’ll pay them the same total dollars, let’s say over two years. So higher AAV that’s going to be their hook.
They’re going to try and get guys on higher salaries, shorter term, fill up their roster. But what they don’t want to do is wake up in four years when that young core is ready to go next level and they have to be paid and have all these lasting, older free agent deals, veteran players that don’t fit the picture anymore. So they’re going to be really careful and not lose their minds despite having the most salary cap space in the entire NHL.”
