The Utah Hockey Club took the ice for the first time in the regular season last night at the Delta Center against the Chicago Blackhawks.
Anticipation is building around the team, as Clayton Keller officially announced on Friday that the team has "playoff aspirations" after being named the first captain in franchise history.
The main reason for these playoff aspirations is the additions to the blue line in the offseason. Now that we have seen a few games from each guy in the preseason and one in the regular season, it's time we talk about how they fit and what to expect from Mikhail Sergachev, John Marino and Ian Cole.
What to expect from Utah Hockey Club new blueline additions
Mikhail Sergachev
Sergachev comes to this team, bringing tons of playoff experience. He has won two Stanley Cups with the Tampa Bay Lightning, but with this experience, he is still young, and with him being 26 years old, his age fits right in with the core of this Utah team.
GM Bill Armstrong went out looking for a number-one defenseman, something that you can very rarely acquire in this league. With Sergachev, Armstrong got as close to a number-one defenseman. Most teams aren't going to part ways with a proper number one, but Sergachev has always been viewed as a guy with that potential. But he has just been stuck behind Victor Hedman, one of the best defensemen in the NHL.
While Sergachev has not been the number one guy, he was heavily relied on playing 20+ minutes in both Stanley Cup runs. So far this preseason, he has shown that number-one potential again, registering two points in the three games he played, and Utah controlled 73% of the shot share and 60% of the expected goal share while Sergachev was on the ice at five-on-five. If he can stay healthy for the entire year, I would not be shocked to see Sergachev get some Norris Trophy votes.
John Marino
Marino will miss the start of the year with an injury, but once he returns, we can expect him to slot in the top four defensemen on the first or second paring with either Mikhail Sergachev or Jusso Valimaki. We did not see any of Marino in the preseason due to the injury, but he is known as a shutdown defender who suffered from playing in front of the Devils goaltending, which was the worst in the NHL.
With Connor Ingram back there, Marino should have a bounce-back season. I say this because while Marino was on the ice last year, the Devils controlled 51% of the expected goals, but Marino only had a 42% goal percentage. You would be hard-pressed to find another player in the NHL who dealt with worse goaltending while he was on the ice last year, and it certainly affected Marino's reputation as a shutdown defender. When he makes it back into the Utah lineup, he will show just how much of a defensive impact he can have.
Ian Cole
Ian Cole has made the NHL playoffs nine years in a row, and he did not come to Utah for that streak to end. Cole has had a plus goal share while on the ice at five-on-five in the last six seasons and in 14 of the 17 years he has played in the NHL.
Cole is coming to Utah, likely to play on the third pairing to provide a shutdown factor beside Michael Kesselring. Kesselring has shown some talent on the backend but still has some room to grow before becoming a reliable NHL defender. However, with Cole beside him, Kesselring will have a safety blanket, allowing him to make some mistakes that he may have to bail out.
The concern with Cole is his age; he is coming in at 35 years old, and this is where defensemen can start hitting a wall. A good example would have been T.J. Brodie for the Maple Leafs; in 2022-23, Brodie was a reliable top-four defender. Then, in 2023-24, Brodie turned 35 and fell off a cliff and was one of the worst defensemen in the NHL last season. But last year, Cole ranked in the top three percent of defensemen in defensive wins-above-replacement (WAR) and top 20% of defensemen in penalty kill WAR, so as long as Cole doesn't walk off the same cliff Brodie did, Utah is going to have a great shutdown defender for their third pairing.