Smith Entertainment Group Officially Acquires Utah Hockey Club
The Smith Entertainment Group has officially closed all of its transactions necessary to acquire the hockey operations of the Arizona Coyotes franchise, the NHL confirmed in a statement Thursday. The new franchise will officially be known as Utah Hockey Club for the 2024-25 season, also confirming their temporary colorways and jerseys.
While largely a formality to close the sale as initially described in April, it is not without ramifications for some still affiliated with the now-deactivated Coyotes franchise. PHNX Sports’ Craig Morgan reports that many of their remaining office staff are expected to be laid off in the coming days.
The Coyotes’ roster from last season, including pending free agents, is now officially under contract with Utah. The new franchise has also acquired the Coyotes’ full reserve list, future draft picks, and all members of their hockey operations department, led by general manager Bill Armstrong.
As announced by the team, the initial branding consists of a simple black, blue and white color scheme that will only remain in effect temporarily next season. A fan vote between six permanent team name finalists – Utah Blizzard, Utah Hockey Club, Utah Mammoth, Utah Outlaws, Utah Venom and Utah Yeti – remains open through June 20. It’s unclear if the current colors will remain past 2024-25.
It’s an important procedural step to allow Utah to operate without restraint as the draft and free agency approach. The team has reportedly already signed a few Coyotes reserve list players, including 2022 second-round pick Julian Lutz. Those deals will now be officially registered with the league. Armstrong can now also officially register new contracts for their large slate of pending RFAs, which includes defensemen Sean Durzi, J.J. Moser, Juuso Välimäki and center Barrett Hayton.
Senators UFA Jiri Smejkal Signs In Czechia
Senators pending unrestricted free agent Jiri Smejkal won’t be returning to the team next season – or the NHL entirely, for that matter. The Czech winger is returning home on a long-term deal with HC Dynamo Pardubice, keeping him in the top-level Extraliga through the 2028-29 season, per a team announcement.
Smejkal, 27, was one of the first international free agent signings of the 2023 offseason, landing with the Sens in early May. He was coming off a strong season with IK Oskarshamn of the Swedish Hockey League, posting 23 goals and 43 points in 49 games.
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out for the 6’4″ power winger in North America. He didn’t make the team out of camp and was assigned to AHL Belleville, although he eventually earned a recall in December. Smejkal went on to play 20 games in Ottawa this season, potting his first and likely only NHL goal in the final game of the campaign against the Bruins. He added an assist but managed just 10 total shots on goal and averaged less than 9:30 per game while posting some of the worst possession metrics on the team.
Clearly outmatched at the NHL level, Smejkal did decently well in the minors for the B-Sens, posting nine goals and 22 points in 47 games. But he struggled in the postseason, going without a point in seven contests.
After that tough showing, it’s no surprise to see Smejkal return to Europe. He’ll play in Czechia next season for the first time since suiting up with HC Sparta Praha in 2019-20. The native of Ceske Budejovice will likely play out his prime in Pardubice, whose roster boasts former Sharks Martin Kaut and Lukas Radil at forward and ex-Rangers blue liner Libor Hájek on defense. They’ve had the best record in the Extraliga for two years in a row but haven’t won a league championship since 2012.
Avalanche Sign Jere Innala To Entry-Level Deal
The Avalanche announced today that they’ve signed forward Jere Innala to a one-year, entry-level deal. Financial terms were not disclosed.
In doing so, the Avs dip their toes into international free-agent waters. Innala, 26, is an undersized sniper who was never drafted by an NHL club, but the Finnish winger has been a mainstay in the two top leagues in Scandinavia for the past six years.
Standing at 5’9″ and 183 lbs, Innala has spent the last two seasons with Frölunda HC of the Swedish Hockey League. His point production there has been decent, totaling 26 goals and 54 points in 94 regular-season games, but not reminiscent of the point-per-game pace he flashed in his native Liiga with HPK and HIFK in 2020-21 and 2021-22.
However, Innala is coming off an electric postseason showing with Frölunda that boosted his NHL stock. While they were eliminated in seven games by eventual champion Skellefteå AIK in the league semifinals, Innala still managed to lead the league in playoff scoring with 11 goals and 15 points in 14 games. He also capped off his season with a solid showing for Finland at the World Championship, scoring twice and adding three assists in eight games en route to being named a top-three player on the team.
Innala’s game relies on his speed and edgework to be effective, lacking the strength or checking ability to compensate for his frame. As such, the likelihood of him playing in the NHL next season is slim, but he could be a leading scorer for the Avs’ minor-league affiliate.
That’s not to say he doesn’t have any NHL upside – there’s likely a ceiling of him making the team as a fourth-line scoring winger with power play time. With his cheap entry-level cap hit, that could prove beneficial for a club dealing with a confirmed season-opening absence of top-six forward Valeri Nichushkin and another potential absence of captain Gabriel Landeskog as he continues to recover from multiple knee surgeries.
Innala will turn 27 next March, so he’ll be an unrestricted free agent upon completing his deal.
Rangers’ Kaapo Kakko Signs Qualifying Offer
Rangers winger Kaapo Kakko will sign his one-year, $2.4MM qualifying offer and avoid restricted free agency, reports the New York Post’s Larry Brooks. The deal will yield a $300K increase over his previous $2.1MM cap hit but will pay him the same salary he earned in the 2023-24 season. The Rangers later made the signing official but did not confirm financial details.
Kakko, 23, did reach RFA status briefly after his entry-level deal expired in 2022 but agreed to a two-year, $4.2MM pact in late July. He would have been arbitration-eligible this summer if he remained unsigned.
Coming off a career-high 40 points in 2022-23, Kakko was expected to build on his offensive showing and play closer to the potential indicated by his second-overall billing in the 2019 draft. It didn’t go as planned, however, as he dropped firmly back into a bottom-six role under head coach Peter Laviolette, managing 13 goals and 19 points in 61 games while averaging a career-low 13:17.
While he still managed to score 13 goals and shoot 14.3%, north of his career average, his normally high-end even-strength possession impacts dipped, making it harder to justify giving him fringe top-six minutes with his otherwise limited offensive production. His 49.4 xGF% was his worst since his rookie season, per Hockey Reference.
Kakko’s offensive struggles continued in the playoffs, as he scored just one goal and one assist and had a -4 rating in 15 games. He was a healthy scratch for Game 2 of their Eastern Conference Final loss to the Panthers, a move that some speculated may lead to a trade request. The Rangers were fielding trade interest in Kakko as far back as January, but general manager Chris Drury publically reaffirmed his belief in his potential earlier this month.
No matter what, getting an extension done a couple of weeks in advance of the draft helps the Rangers. It either provides them with more cost certainty heading into free agency next month or makes it easier to put together a trade by providing any potential acquiring teams with cost certainty.
For now, Kakko’s signing brings the Rangers’ projected cap hit next season to $78.8MM, $9.2MM short of the $88MM upper limit. They still have two RFAs to re-sign in defensemen Ryan Lindgren and Braden Schneider, and have multiple notable pending UFAs, including Erik Gustafsson, Jack Roslovic and Alexander Wennberg.
Kakko will be in the same situation when his new deal expires next summer as an arbitration-eligible RFA with a $2.4MM qualifying offer.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
Maple Leafs Part Ways With Laurence Gilman
The Maple Leafs are parting ways with longtime front office member Laurence Gilman, Pierre LeBrun of TSN and The Athletic reports Thursday. He was on an expiring contract.
Gilman, 59, joined the Leafs in 2018 as an assistant general manager to replace Kyle Dubas, who was promoted to GM after Lou Lamoriello‘s contract to serve in the role ran out. For his first three years in the organization, he also served as the GM of their AHL affiliate, the Toronto Marlies, just as Dubas had since 2014. He was replaced as GM of the Marlies for the 2021-22 season by Ryan Hardy but remained in his AGM role on the NHL staff.
After one year as AGM without any AHL responsibilities, Gilman was elevated to a senior vice president of hockey operations title. That’s where he’s served for the past two seasons, but no longer. He’ll hit the open market and potentially look to join his fourth NHL franchise this summer.
The longtime executive has been in NHL front offices on and off since 1998 when he got a chance with the Coyotes as their director of hockey operations. He also had AGM roles in the desert and managed their AHL affiliate for a brief time before moving on in 2007, taking a year off before finding his next home with the Canucks. Gilman stayed in Vancouver from 2008 to 2015 as their VP of hockey ops and assistant general manager, helping build the team that won the Presidents’ Trophy and reached the Stanley Cup Final in 2011.
With a history of taking years off between jobs, it may be another year or two before Gilman’s name resurfaces.
Canucks Looking To Move Ilya Mikheyev
The Canucks are looking to find a trade for forward Ilya Mikheyev, Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli reports. The Russian winger checks in at No. 6 on his latest list of offseason trade targets, joining a list of other well-documented deal candidates that includes Nikolaj Ehlers, Mitch Marner and Martin Nečas.
But unlike the others, it will likely take assets from the Canucks to get out of Mikheyev’s contract. While Vancouver’s front office, led by Patrik Allvin and Jim Rutherford, has done good work to get them back to playoff contention, his signing in free agency two years ago is a major blemish. Under contract with a $4.75MM cap hit for two more seasons, the 29-year-old has 24 goals and 59 points in 124 games since landing in British Columbia.
This season was especially difficult for Mikheyev. After missing a solid chunk of his inaugural season in Vancouver with an ACL tear initially sustained during the preseason, he had surgery in February 2023. He wasn’t cleared to play when training camp began in advance of this season, though, and missed the first few games of the regular season.
Mikheyev returned with a vengeance, putting up five goals and eight points in his first nine games after making his season debut in late October. But his production fell off a cliff the rest of the season, and he finished the campaign with just one goal in 33 games after the All-Star break. He was a non-factor in the playoffs, too, going without a point and posting a -4 rating in 11 games.
At nearly $5MM per season, they can’t stomach that level of inconsistent play in an offseason where new contracts are needed for most of their defense and a few key forwards, such as top pending UFA center Elias Lindholm. Teams around the league know that, Seravalli reports, and are asking the Canucks to attach assets to Mikheyev’s contract in any trade talks, but Allvin is “balking” at the notion.
Per Seravalli, the Canucks are countering teams’ asks by “saying that it takes a full year to recover from ACL repair, and Mikheyev should be much better next season.” But if they were confident he was going to be worth the money he’s owed next season, why would they be looking to move him?
Mikheyev is a rare overseas undrafted free agent signing success story, sticking in the majors ever since the Maple Leafs brought him over from Russia in 2019. But his career-best point total is only 32, although he did make it happen in only 53 games for the Leafs in 2021-22. That platform year earned him the four-year, $19MM commitment from Vancouver with a 12-team no-trade list throughout.
While he replicated that 0.6 points per game pace in his first year with the Canucks, he hasn’t been able to stretch that level of offensive performance over a season in which he’s stayed healthy. His 78 games played this season was actually a career-high by quite a wide margin, eclipsing the 54 contests he played in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 campaign.
If there was one season left on his deal, it may be a different story. But with two years left and reduced leverage due to his no-trade list, it’s a near-certainty that they’ll need to give up assets to completely get out from under his deal. Buying him out is also an option and would yield a cap penalty ranging from $1.15MM to $2.15MM annually over the next four seasons, per CapFriendly.
Blues Extend Doug Armstrong, Promote Alexander Steen
The Blues have shored up the future of their hockey operations department, keeping general manager Doug Armstrong in the organization past the expiration of his current deal in 2026. He’s signed a three-year extension to serve as president of hockey operations through the 2028-29 season, while longtime player Alexander Steen will replace Armstrong as GM for 2026-27 and beyond. Steen, who spent this season with the Blues as a team consultant and European development coach, has been promoted to special assistant to the GM for the next two seasons.
St. Louis also announced that Tim Taylor, their director of player personnel, has been promoted to assistant GM. Taylor has served in the role for the past two seasons after initially joining the organization as their director of player development in 2011.
Armstrong, 59, will conclude his run as Blues GM at 16 seasons when all is said and done. He’s guided the Blues to 10 playoff appearances in his 14 seasons at the helm thus far, and his roster construction yielded the club’s only Stanley Cup championship in 2019.
One of the key veteran members of that Cup-winning team was Steen, who was effective in a checking role and had five points in 26 postseason games. A Stanley Cup ring was a spectacular way to bookend a lengthy and fruitful career in St. Louis, where Steen had 195 goals and 496 points in 765 games and was one of the better defensive wingers in the game in his prime in the mid-2010s.
Armstrong wasn’t the GM who acquired Steen via trade from the Maple Leafs in 2008 – that was Larry Pleau – but he did acquire most of the core. Just one summer before winning it all, he swung a blockbuster trade with the Sabres to acquire center Ryan O’Reilly, who broke out for a career-high 77 points and took home the Selke and Conn Smythe trophies in his first year under the Gateway Arch.
Needless to say, they’re big shoes for Steen to fill as he enters a top-level executive role six years after retiring as a player in 2020. While unusual, it’s not surprising for them to announce a clear, long-term succession plan to aid in his development as a manager while keeping a sense of stability in the organization while he and Armstrong work to retool a roster currently mired in mediocrity.
As for Taylor – per the team, his responsibilities won’t change much. His duties as AGM will still revolve around managing day-to-day player personnel activities.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports.
Sharks Hire Ryan Warsofsky As Head Coach
Sharks assistant coach Ryan Warsofsky is getting a big promotion. According to Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet, he’s filling their head coaching vacancy after being passed over for the title two years ago. San Jose promptly made the hiring official via a press release.
“We’re very excited to announce Ryan as the 11th head coach of the San Jose Sharks,” said general manager Mike Grier. “His track record of success at nearly every level of hockey as a head and assistant coach speaks for itself. Ryan knows our existing group well, has the respect of the players who he will be working with, and will be a great teacher for the young players who will be joining our organization.”
Grier made the call to fire former head coach David Quinn, who they tabbed for the role over Warsofsky during their last search in 2022, in April. Quinn compiled a 41-98-25 record (.326 points percentage) while overseeing some of the darkest days of a tough but needed rebuild in the Bay Area.
Warsofsky, a Massachusetts native who had a collegiate career with Sacred Heart University and Curry College, landed his first professional coaching job as an assistant with the ECHL’s South Carolina Stingrays in 2013, one year after ending his playing career.
He was then promoted to head coach and director of hockey ops for the club in 2016, staying there for two more seasons before the Hurricanes tabbed him as an assistant coach for the AHL’s Charlotte Checkers, their top minor-league affiliate at the time. Yet again, he was promoted in short order, taking over as head coach in 2019 and remaining with the Hurricanes organization when they switched their AHL affiliation to the Chicago Wolves for 2020-21.
In Carolina, Warsofsky was a part of two Calder Cup-winning clubs, first as an assistant with the Checkers in 2019 and then as a bench boss with the Wolves in 2022. That latter title, in which he led a veteran-laden team including Josh Leivo, Stefan Noesen and Alex Lyon to the pinnacle of minor league hockey, earned him consideration for multiple NHL coaching vacancies the following offseason, including the Sharks’.
He had to settle for an assistant role, but two years later, his time has come. At 36 years old, Warsofsky becomes the youngest bench boss in the league and the youngest since Jeremy Colliton was tabbed as head coach of the Blackhawks in 2018 at age 33.
Warsofsky beat out ex-Sharks winger Marco Sturm, another potential first-time NHL head coach, for the role. Sturm, who’s coached in the Kings organization for the past six seasons, was deep in the interview process as late as early this week.
With Warsofsky’s hiring, all head coaching vacancies this offseason have been filled.
Senators Listening To Offers For Seventh Overall Pick
The Senators fell short of expectations again this season by finishing 13 points out of a playoff spot. Naturally, entering their first offseason with Steve Staios as general manager, they’ll be looking to make a major roster shakeup to finally get back to postseason play in 2024-25.
According to Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun, Ottawa is listening to offers for their seventh overall pick in this month’s draft in order to do so.
As Garrioch points out, the likeliest area for a big trade is between the pipes. He reported earlier in the week that the team is aggressively pursuing a goaltending upgrade. They’ve been in conversation with the Flames about Jacob Markström, made a push for the Bruins’ Linus Ullmark and contacted the Predators about Juuse Saros.
If the Sens parted with the seventh-overall pick in a trade, they wouldn’t be out of action on the first night of the draft entirely. They also own the 25th overall pick, originally sent from Boston to the Red Wings in last year’s Tyler Bertuzzi trade deadline deal and again from Detroit to Ottawa for Alex DeBrincat.
Still, parting with a top-10 selection in one of the deeper early first rounds in recent memory is a tough pill to swallow for a team that’s largely exhausted the prospect pool it has built up from years of rebuilding. Their three first-round picks in 2020, Tim Stützle, Jake Sanderson and Ridly Greig, have all graduated to NHL roles and look to all be on their way to hitting their ceiling. That’s great, but they haven’t managed to draft any true impact prospects since then, and there’s little help on the way.
Garrioch said a trade involving seventh overall may not see them surrender the pick entirely – moving back in the first round to make an immediate roster upgrade is also an option. But that would still see them acquire a significantly lower-quality prospect than the top-six forwards and even top-pair defenders that will still be available at No. 7 unless it’s only a few spots.
“There are so many questions about this early group,” senior vice president of hockey operations Dave Poulin said. “It’s very hard to nail down. Very often, you know who is going to go No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3. This group is all over the board. By all accounts, Macklin Celebrini will go No. 1, and after that, it’s wide open.”
Garrioch relays that Poulin also said at a season ticket-holder event last night that the club had offers on the table for short-term upgrades back at the trade deadline. But with the new-look front office coming into shape throughout the season (Poulin wasn’t hired until New Year’s, for example), they weren’t comfortable making any major transactions without more time to develop a long-term plan as a cohesive group.
One thing is clear – the spinning-tires days of the Pierre Dorion era are over, at least ideologically. Whether Staios, who’s months into his first GM job at the NHL level, can execute that remains to be seen.
Aside from seventh overall, they may end up with another high-value trade chip in defenseman Jakob Chychrun. Entering the final year of his contract, they’ll need to suss out quickly whether he’s willing to re-sign.
If not, expect the 2016 16th-overall pick to be on the move for the second time in the last two years. The 26-year-old’s value is high after staying healthy for all 82 games this season, smashing his previous career high of 68 while posting 41 points and averaging 22:23 per game. His possession metrics, while not elite, were far better than his -30 rating would suggest (51.2 CF%, 50.2 xGF% at even strength).
PHR Live Chat: 6/12/24
PHR’s Josh Erickson is holding his weekly Wednesday live chat today at 2 p.m. CDT. You can join using this link.