With the NHL draft on Friday and Saturday, as well as the start of the free agency period on Tuesday, it’s the busiest time of the year for general managers.
Despite that, Utah Mammoth GM Bill Armstrong took the time to address the media on Tuesday. Here’s what he said.
Bill Armstrong’s drafting philosophy
Armstrong quickly shut down the notion that, having moved up 10 spots in the draft, he has house money to play with. Even when he has far more picks than he started with, he likes to treat each one like it’s his only.
For that reason, he and his staff are taking deep dives on every player in Utah’s draft range. In addition to interviewing and testing the players directly, they often talk to family members, youth coaches, teachers and anyone else that can give them a good sense of who these guys really are.
“You can see, at an early age, the leadership and the qualities that these particular young men have, even where they’re 15, 16, 17,” Armstrong said. “You can really learn a lot about them and kind of predict the future by getting in there and really diving deep.”
It also includes significant medical testing, so as to not have any surprises after drafting a player. With players such as Roger McQueen, Caleb Desnoyers and Matthew Schaefer, all of whom are coming off significant injuries, that step in the process is especially important — and Armstrong said his staff has covered all the bases in that regard.
As a former scout himself, Armstrong firmly believes in giving the final say to his head scouts.
“If you put the miles in, you deserve to make that pick,” he said.
He also declared, as most hockey executives do, that he’ll take the best available player with each draft pick.
Will the Mammoth keep or trade the fourth-overall pick?
Since the day the Mammoth were awarded the fourth-overall pick, Armstrong has said he’s open to trading it — but his comments Tuesday made that seem like the least-likely scenario.
“It’s very rare that you can move from four to two or two to one — it’s very rare that that happens because everybody values the player that they have at that pick," he said. “But, do you have to explore it? Yes. That’s part of my job. Every morning, I wake up and go to work and see if we can better the pick or if we can come up with different options to maximize where we are.”
What will the Mammoth do in free agency?
Reporters across the league have tied the Mammoth to nearly every big-name free agent — but after talking to Armstrong directly, it seems some of those reports may have been mere speculation.
“We don’t necessarily need to sell the farm for a 31-year-old, 35-year-old for $40 million to come in and clog our team up, and we can’t make the signing when we need it,” he said.
He reiterated his philosophy that 22-year-old stars typically aren’t the ones leading Stanley Cup-winning teams, so he doesn’t want to get sucked into a false notion that they can win before they’re ready and tie up the cap space that they’ll need a few years from now.
“We’ve always firmly believed that if the right free agent’s there, we’ll sign him — money’s not an issue," Armstrong said. “We’re also at a point with the club, though, that it’s not our final piece we’re adding.”
The bulk of Utah’s roster spots are already full, but there are a few bits of business still to be done. Namely, pending RFA Jack McBain needs a contract and they need a contingency plan for Connor Ingram.
Armstrong didn’t have much to say on either front, reiterating that negotiations with McBain’s camp are ongoing and that nothing that’s been reported about Ingram’s status is anything more than speculation.