The Utah Hockey Club will open their regular season schedule against Connor Bedard and the Chicago Blackhawks on October 8th, 2024. While this will be Utah's first game in franchise history, we do have a lot of previous data on this team, as the Smith Entertainment Group inherited the entire Arizona Coyotes roster.
The Arizona Coyotes have not been competitive in a long time; they have only made one playoff appearance since 2012-13. However, the Smith Entertainment Group bought and brought this franchise to Utah at the perfect time. Over the past few years, the Coyotes did an excellent job drafting and bringing in young talent to rebuild this team.
As we enter the 2024-25 NHL season, Utah will reap the benefits of the rebuilding process that the Arizona Coyotes fans endured. However, this team is still relatively young, and they have yet to make a big jump forward. Utah management's decision to bring in Mikhail Sergachev and John Marino to make this blueline more competitive tells me this team is ready to try and make that jump up the standings.
However, even with bringing in some proven talent, this Utah team still has a lot to prove before people start to believe this team has a real chance to make the playoffs. Here are a couple of areas of concern that could plague the Utah Hockey Club's first season:
Utah Hockey Club's Greatest Year One Concern
Although the Utah Hockey Club inherited one of the deepest prospect pools in the NHL, none of those prospects are NHL-ready goalies, and it appears that Utah will have to use the same goaltending tandem as the Arizona Coyotes have used the last two years.
Connor Ingram and Karel Vejmelka have split games over the last two seasons, and this will likely happen again this year. Vejmelka took most of the load in 2022-23, playing 49 games, but the previous year, Ingram took over the starting job and made 48 starts. I expect Ingram to get the lion's share of the workload again this season as he is coming off back-to-back seasons with positive goals saved above expected. In contrast, Vejmelka has let in 31.6 more goals than expected over the last three years with the Coyotes.
With Utah's additions of Sergachev, Marino, and Ian Cole to bolster the blue line, I would not be shocked if both of these guys had the best year of their careers, purely because this is the best defensive team they have played in front of.
However, if this team expects to be in the playoff conversation, it will need more than career-best years, as Ingram has been very average, and Vejmelka has just been bad. Ingram has been serviceable, but when you think of the best teams in the league, Ingram isn't up to the standard of other goalies you see making deep playoff runs, but that is what Utah will need to make the playoffs if Vejmelka does not improve.
Ingram has shown these flashes of brilliance, though. He finished tied for the league lead with six shutouts last season and had the 10th-best high-danger save percentage of any goalie who made five or more starts last year (via NaturalStatTrick). The problem was his consistency. Only 56% of his starts were quality, and 22% were graded as really bad starts (via HockeyReference). Ingram is only 27 years old, so there is lots of time for him to continue to grow, but he is getting to the age where you'd like to settle in and see him become a consistent number-one goalie.
With Utah's young forward core likely to improve and the defensive core bolstered by offseason acquisitions, Utah needs its goalies to make the same step. With Vejmelka not showing any improvement, Ingram needs to take that number one role and be consistent, or this team may struggle to win games again, even with its offensive firepower and defensive upgrades.