There was a sense of familiarity in Bill Armstrong’s voice.
On Tuesday night, the general manager of Utah’s new NHL franchise met with reporters via Zoom after the team was awarded the sixth overall pick in the 2024 NHL draft, which will be held at the end of June in Las Vegas.
For a while now, much of the talk surrounding the franchise has been related to its failure in Arizona and then the newness of its arrival in the Beehive State.
But on Tuesday after the NHL’s draft lottery went chalk, Armstrong could just talk about his job, which is to spearhead his organization’s efforts to select the players of tomorrow who will represent Utah and hockey’s highest level.
This will mark Armstrong’s fourth draft being in the lead chair of the franchise after he was hired by Arizona in September of 2020.
“You get excited because now you know exactly where you’re picking,” Armstrong said. “Now it’s going to the scouting meetings and honing in on the players that we like at six. It’s really now just targeting your guys.
“It’s an exciting time of year. All year you’ve battled and gone to war with your scouts going across the world, working every single night in every hockey rink across North America and Europe. ... There are a lot of talented players up top in the draft, and we’ve got a chance to get one of them.”
Participating in its first NHL draft lottery, Utah’s new pro hockey team didn’t have good luck, but it didn’t have bad luck either. Sixth was where Utah was slotted to pick based on Arizona finishing the 2023-24 regular season with the sixth-worst record in the league, and it had just a 7.5% chance of getting the top pick.
The San Jose Sharks, who had the worst record in the league, won the No. 1 pick and the right to select the consensus top prospect in the draft, forward Macklin Celebrini out of Boston University. The Sharks had an 18.5% chance of winning the lottery.
“I think every organization dreams of moving up and picking at one, right?,” Armstrong said. “So we’re all very hopeful that that lottery ball’s gonna bounce our way, then reality sets in and they flip the card and you’re like, ‘OK, well we didn’t move back. Let’s pick at six. We’re gonna get a real good player. We’re picking in the top 10. This is where we’re supposed to be and here we go.”
After Celebrini, there are a number of defensemen who Utah could be in line to select and a few offensive players, although don’t necessarily count on seeing the pick at the Delta Center this fall, as the NHL draft operates more similarly to Major League Baseball than it does the NBA or NFL in terms of the likelihood being rather low that even top prospects will make an immediate impact after being drafted.
“I think normally when you’re in an NHL draft, I think the top three always have a chance to come in and play,” Armstrong said, adding that numerous factors dictate whether or not that happens. “They’re still young men. When they sit in front of you in the office, you realize how young they are, but there’s usually a good chunk, maybe three tofive that can usually play the first year.”
While Utah currently has just one first-round pick, it owns the most total picks in the 2024 draft of any team in the NHL with 13. It has three in the second round, three in the third and six in later rounds.
Though Utah is considered to be in a rebuilding stage, it has an embarrassment of riches in terms of draft capital, as it owns 34 picks total in the next three drafts, with 20 of them being first, second or third rounders.
That gives Utah the opportunity to make moves up and down the draft board until they’re on the clock for the first time.
“We always try to look at every single option. ... It’s a whole strategy in itself, and it consumes you the week of the draft. We’ll talk about some ideas as we move through the process, but the week of the draft it just consumes you.”
Amidst the franchise turmoil, Armstrong said the process he and his staff have gone through to identify and scout talent has gone unchanged (some pre-draft work will take place in Arizona where a rink is available), but the group is excited to begin a new chapter in Utah.
“Our process has stayed the same,” Armstrong said. “I think the thing that’s changed is our scouts are excited about coming in to Salt Lake, seeing the city and getting the vibe of the excitement in this city, and I think that’s going to help us as we go through the process.”