On Friday and Saturday, NHL prospects from across the world will hear their names called and have their futures set — for a while, at least — in professional hockey.
The two-day NHL draft begins Friday at 5 p.m. MDT in Las Vegas at The Sphere, and Utah Hockey Club has the sixth pick in the first round, with 12 other picks to follow over the course of the seven-round draft, barring trades.
Some of the players drafted may end up becoming stars for UHC. Others won’t ever play for Utah’s new NHL franchise.
Some were drafted as highly touted prospects, others as projects and others still as extreme long shots.
But every pick made by Utah Hockey Club over the next two days will be analyzed and scrutinized as they will officially be the first in the franchises’ record books.
As much focus is put on drafts, though, team building can be something of a mad science experiment.
All you have to do is look at UHC’s current roster to understand that.
How many players on Utah Hockey Club’s roster were drafted by the team?
Based on the 2023-24 roster — which is in flux with the free agent signing period set to begin on July 1 — Utah’s NHL team is a mix of homegrown and borrowed players.
Six current UHC players were drafted by the club — centers Logan Cooley and Barrett Hayton, left wings Julian Lutz and Matias Maccelli, right wing Clayton Keller and defenseman J.J. Moser. Another left wing — Michael Carcone — went undrafted but has only played in the NHL for Arizona.
Of those six, three were first-round draft picks — Cooley, Hayton and Keller — while another two — Lutz and Moser — were second-round picks. Maccelli was a fourth-round selection.
How many first-round picks were on Utah Hockey Club’s roster last season?
All told, UHC boasts seven former first-round picks, including three players who were picked in the top 10 — a No. 3 pick (Cooley), No. 5 pick (Hayton) and a No. 7 pick (Keller).
Not by coincidence, Keller was the team’s only All-Star this past season, after scoring 33 goals and accounting for 76 points.
Cooley, meanwhile, was a 20 goal scorer.
Another former first rounder — Lawson Crouse, who was taken No. 11 overall by the Florida Panthers in 2015 — also scored 20 or more goals, as did Nick Bjugstad, who was taken No. 19 in 2010 by Florida.
Arizona made it a priority to invest in and acquire young goal scorers and it clearly paid off.
Only one of Utah’s seven former first rounders is a pure defensemen — Juuso Valimaki by the Calgary Flames in 2017.
How many second-round picks were on Utah Hockey Club’s roster last season?
Four UHC players were second-round picks — Lutz, Moser, Travis Dermott and Sean Durzi.
The first two were drafted by Arizona, while Dermott was taken by Toronto in 2015 and Durzi by the same club three years later.
Utah Hockey Club general manager Bill Armstrong has spoken about the need to build up UHC’s blue line — another word for defense — and the franchise has made picks to do that in the past few drafts (Arizona took defenseman Dmitry Simashev with the No. 6 overall pick last year).
So far though, those efforts haven’t paid off yet, but even without an influx of young talent, four of five UHC defensemen last year were drafted in the first or second rounds.
How many third-round picks were on Utah Hockey Club’s roster last season?
Third-round selections are not nearly as well represented on UHC as first or second rounders, which makes sense given the rates at which draft picks actually make it to the NFL.
All told, UHC had only two third-round selections on the roster in 2023-24 — center Jack McBain (taken by the Minnesota Wild in 2018) and goalkeeper Connor Ingram (taken in in 2016 by the Tampa Bay Lightning).
Ingram was Arizona’s best goalkeeper last year, while splitting time with Karel Vejmelka. As for McBain, he had by far his best season at the NHL level, settling as a good center, but not the team’s best.
What about later round selections?
UHC has a smattering of players across the roster that weren’t high-end draft picks.
That includes two centers — Travis Boyd (a sixth-round pick in 2011 by the Washington Capitals) and Alex Kerfoot (a fifth-round pick in 2012 by the New Jersey Devils).
Maccelli was a fourth-round selection, and he has definitely outperformed expectations for a player draft where he was.
Defenseman Josh Brown was a sixth-round pick in 2013 by Florida and Vejmelka — the other goalkeeper — was a fifth-round pick in 2015 by the Nashville Predators.
What to watch for during the 2024 NHL draft
Based on the current roster alone, selections made by Utah in the first and second rounds of the draft have the best chance of becoming contributors for the franchise down the line.
But with how team building works, many of the key players for Utah Hockey Club in the future will likely have been drafted by another team. So any first- or second-round selections made over the next two days could be of interest to UHC in the future.
And it is the future that is enticing with Utah Hockey Club, as the franchise remains in a long-term rebuild.