Expect The Utah Hockey Club To Be Active This Offseason
TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun joined Jay Onrait on SportsCenter and said the Utah Hockey Club will be busy this summer as they look to sign free agents in the short term and build in as we wait for the name to be announced.
** NHLRumors.com transcript
NHL Rumors: Florida Panthers Want to Keep Sam Reinhart Long Term
Jay Onrait: “Utah's new NHL franchise owner Ryan Smith was on Pat McAfee's show on TSN this week, and he says they've narrowed down the nickname for a potential team here down to four words. And he even said who the two names were and he said Yeti and Mammoth were two names.
First of all, what are your thoughts on either of these two words? Do you like Pierre LeBrun?”
Pierre LeBrun: “I like the idea and let me tell you something, I think even if you could sell Austin Matthews tomorrow, the name of the Utah team would be of interest to a lot of people because of how big that story is. now. I'm kidding. They don't sell Austin Matthews. But you get my point.
NHL Rumors: Utah Will Have Cash and Assets to Spend This Offseason
There is such excitement that Utah will finally get its name. And I have to mention this again that Ryan Smith told me this hours back after getting the Coyotes that he is willing to start next season without a team name. If it takes that long to get the fan poll working properly then so be it but obviously there is an opportunity that will have been found by then.
You know, they might be the busiest team in the NHL this summer. They have over $40 million in salary cap space. Jay, what would you do with over $40 million in salary cap space?
I talked to Bill Armstrong, the GM this week and one thing he said is they're not going to get crazy excited. The sailors won't get drunk with all that cap money. They will be angry.
They have holes to fill all over their blue line Jay is undrafted. They don't have a single NHL defenseman currently on their roster. And that includes Sean Durzi who they have to re-sign?
But one of the things that Bill Armstrong really emphasized and yes, they're going to release it on July 1st and free agency. They're going to use our cap space to maybe, you know, trade some guys that teams need to create cap space, but they really want to stay respectful of the rebuild that they started three years ago.
NHL Rumors: Utah, and the Tampa Bay Lightning
They will enter the fourth year of this rebuild. They have a young core. So if they're going to dip into free agency and they're going to do it, they want to go to a short, one, two, maybe three-year deal. And what they want to do is if a player is offered X amount of money within three years from another team, they will pay them equal dollars, let's say in two years. It is the highest AAV that will be their hook.
They will try to get high salaries, short time, fill their list. But what they don't want to do is wake up in four years when that young core is ready to go to the next level and they have to get paid and have all these free agent deals for older, veteran players who don't fit the picture now. So they're going to be very careful and not lose their minds even though they have the biggest salary cap in the entire NHL.”
Source link
