As the halfway point of the NHL season approaches, we polled a handful of Utah Hockey Club players to evaluate the leadership group. Here’s what they said.
Clayton Keller, Utah Hockey Club captain
Clayton Keller is the fourth-youngest player to captain an expansion franchise in its first season, and the youngest since 1979. By all accounts, he’s doing everything right.
“He’s doing a great job,” said associate captain Lawson Crouse. “His motivation and his passion for the game stand out, (as well as) his drive and his work ethic. Playing the right way is contagious throughout the group.”
Everyone we spoke to said that Keller leads by example. He doesn’t talk as much as some other captains might — he prefers to speak through the way he plays.
“He’s so competitive that it’s contagious,” Crouse said. “He wants to win, he wants the team to win. He wants everyone to be playing their best. When you have that out of your leader, it’s easy to get behind and follow. It really pushes guys to be the best each and every day.”
Mikhail Sergachev, the newest addition to the team’s rotation of alternate captains, agreed.
“You see it on the ice,” he said. “He plays with passion, he does all the right things and he’s improving his game every game. That’s going to help us in the long run.”
Alex Kerfoot, who graduated from Harvard with a degree in economics, compared his captain to the CEO of a large company; it doesn’t matter if he’s 20 or 70, and it doesn’t matter how successful he’s been in the past — he strives for continual improvement.
“He’s the type of guy who always wants to get better in whatever he’s doing,” Kerfoot said. “It’s never a finished product. You’re always evolving.”
Keller’s teammates also had nothing bad to say about his character.
“As a person, he hasn’t changed,” Crouse said. “He’s one of the nicest guys out there and a very caring and loyal guy and would do anything for you.”
That was evident, albeit in a small way, when he went out of his way to collect signatures from his teammates for the mother of a child at the children’s hospital in early December. When he sees an area where he can make a difference in someone’s life, he doesn’t hesitate.
What is an ‘associate captain’?
There’s an ongoing debate as to whether the players who wear the letter “A” on their jerseys are “alternate” captains or “assistant” captains. Utah HC complicated that when they named Crouse “associate” captain.
What’s the difference? Nobody — including Crouse himself — seemed to know. When asking, we got responses such as, “What do you think it is?” and “I don’t know. You’d have to ask the team.” But they all pointed to one thing: communal leadership.
“At the end of the day, the good thing is that, whether you have a letter or not, everyone has a voice,” Crouse said. “Everyone has the ability to lead and you don’t need a letter on your chest to do that.”
Despite Crouse’s offensive struggles this season, he has found ways to fulfill his responsibility and impact the team from the locker room.
“I think that he’s done an unbelievable job,” Kerfoot said. “He’s very well-connected with the team. He’s earned that responsibility for a reason.”
Crouse was the longest-tenured Coyote when the team left Arizona this summer, having been there since 2016. He’s on pace for less than half of his point total from last year, but that matters much less to the coaching staff than what he provides to the team off the ice.
Utah Hockey Club alternate captains
NHL teams are allowed to have up to three players wearing letters on their jerseys in each game. Keller and Crouse are permanent, while the third “A” rotates between a number of other veterans. So far, the group has consisted of Kerfoot, Sergachev, Ian Cole and Nick Schmaltz.
While the coaches have to play “bad cop” on occasion, Kerfoot takes pride in being “good cop.”
“I try to connect with lots of guys on the team, just try to make everyone feel welcome — make everyone feel like they’re a big part of the group,” he said. “I feel like I have a good understanding of the game and what the team and the coaches expect. (I) try to do my best to carry that out and make sure the guys are following through on that.”
Like Keller, Sergachev said he prefers to lead by example on the ice. He says the most important thing he learned from playing with renowned leaders such as Steven Stamkos, Victor Hedman and Ryan McDonagh is that you should never get too high or too low.
“The season is long,” he said. “You have stretches where you play poorly but you win, you have stretches where you play great but you lose, and that’s how the game goes.”
We didn’t get the chance to talk to Cole or Schmaltz about their leadership styles, but having spent a lot of time around the team the last few months, it’s clear that Cole receives as much respect as anyone. He’s been around the block and back and he’s never afraid to answer the hard questions. Schmaltz is much more reserved than the others, but it seems that players appreciate the things he does on the ice.
Head coach André Tourigny has been impressed with the progression his leadership group has shown this season.
“I like their compete level,” he said. “I think we’ve had moments in the season where we needed to tighten it up a little bit — stay cool, stay calm and collected — and I think they did a good job. They’re young in age, but they’re starting to have a good chunk of experience in that group.”
