General manager Bill Armstrong attends a media opportunity prior to the premier game for the Utah Hockey Club (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
The Utah Hockey Club is off to an impressive 3-1 start after the New Jersey Devils handed the club its first loss of the season and in franchise history. The players, coaches, and management, especially general manager Bill Armstrong, work more freely and without distractions.
With Armstrong and the Utah Hockey Club in New Jersey on Monday to play the Devils, Armstrong spoke exclusively with RG about his plans to remain aggressive after a busy offseason and the type of player he is looking at for his club.
“We’re always looking and listening as we are a competitive club that wants to get better every day,” Armstrong said. “So if we can add at the right time, we certainly will. But it’s one of those things where it’s just the team’s progress and not rushing it. As I have said, we are a fairly young team in the National Hockey League and are in the fourth year of the rebuild. So you don’t want to get too far ahead of yourself here.”
Armstrong and the Utah Hockey Club were aggressive this past offseason with the acquisitions of defensemen Mikhail Sergachev from the Tampa Bay Lightning and John Marino from the New Jersey Devils. Marino has yet to play a game for Utah as he is injured. The club also extended Dylan Guenther and Sean Durzi to go with their core group of players.
Armstrong’s work over the previous year, when the club was based in Arizona, laid the groundwork for the club to be a buyer at the NHL Trade Deadline. Did anyone expect Utah to be this aggressive in the offseason? They had the cap space to take on Sergachev’s $8.5 million contract to lead the defense corps. Plus, as Armstrong stated, he fits the group’s age range.
“It makes sense if you’ve been planning for a guy like Sergachev’s and the Durzi’s of the world and moving ahead with guys still young and in your age bracket,” Armstrong continued. “We’re all for that. That’s our big thing, which is to wake up out of bed and try and improve the club every single day.”
Armstrong is trying to build his defense like the teams that have won the Stanley Cup, most recently the Florida Panthers. He is looking to acquire players between the ages of 24 and 28 because half a team’s defense comes from trade.
“We felt he’s [Sergachev] kind of still in our age range because he’s only 26, and so is Durzi”, Armstrong said. “If you look at the way that Florida was, most of their D were 28, so you’ve got to kind of move into that bracket of age where they got an experience of playing in the National Hockey League, and I think that’s the reason we did that deal. But sometimes, you don’t get everything through the draft. 50% of a Stanley Cup team is traded for, so you’ve got to go out there and make adjustments and really add into what your club needs, and we’re moving into that era where we’ve got a kind of good young players coming. We’ve still got some picks to go, but some trades will have to be made on our side to further up the club and take that next step.”
Armstrong feels that with how his club is playing and is currently built, they will have to make tough decisions about moving out players and making picks to continue to improve and build a Stanley Cup winner.
“We’re probably going to have to do a little bit of the same,” Armstrong said. “We’ll have to make some trades down the stretch, but that’s why we acquired all the prospects and picks.”