The Utah Hockey Club has its first successful professional tryout agreement in league history. The organization announced they have signed forward Kailer Yamamoto to a one-year, two-way contract for the 2024-25 NHL season.
Yamamoto is hopeful this contract will translate into a solid bounceback year for the former Edmonton Oilers prospect. He was drafted with the 22nd overall pick of the 2017 NHL Draft as one of the smaller players in the class at 5’7″.
The NHL has changed quite a bit over the last few decades with smaller frame players becoming some of the game’s best but this has not been a reality for Yamamoto. He showed flashes of being a reliable top-six scorer as early as the 2019-20 season with 11 goals and 26 points in 27 games for the Oilers.
He fell into a middle-six role from 2020-22 scoring 28 goals and 62 points in Edmonton in 133 games. The team hoped Yamamoto would eventually blossom into a consistent top-six threat and opted for a two-year, $6.2MM bridge contract with their young forward in 2022.
Yamamoto only saw a year of this contract with the Oilers scoring 10 goals and 25 points in 58 games. Edmonton traded Yamamoto with Klim Kostin to the Detroit Red Wings for future considerations the next offseason before he was eventually bought out.
The Seattle Kraken, a 280-mile drive from his native Spokane, became his new landing spot on the back of a one-year, $1.5MM contract. The one-year gamble proved bad for both parties as the Kraken limited Yamamoto to an average of 11:59 of ice time per game and the player produced his lowest offensive output since 2018-19.
The depressed season paved the way for Yamamoto to sign a PTO with the new Utah team for training camp. He’s scored three goals over four preseason contests and will now compete for a spot in Utah’s middle six.
TSN’s Chris Johnston was the first to report Utah had signed Yamamoto.