Utah makes a big splash with deals for Vejmelka, Cole and Kerfoot
The Utah Hockey Club put pen to paper on three contract extensions Wednesday night.
On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk chatted about Utah’s three re-signings and what could be the next moves we see out of Salt Lake City.
Tyler Yaremchuk: The Utah extensions we got yesterday – Karel Vejmelka locks in at 5 years by $4.75 million, Ian Cole gets a one-year extension, Alex Kerfoot gets a one-year deal. Is this at all [general manager] Bill Armstrong putting up his hand and saying, ‘Hey, I am not going to add much, but I am also not going to subtract anything. These guys are here to stay’?
Frank Seravalli: He made a statement last week saying that he believes that this team has earned the right to stay together. Hard to argue with that. You look at these two extensions for Cole and Kerfoot. Those guys both actually ended up taking a pay cut from what they were making. They show a commitment to the team with a one-year deal to stay. Vejmelka is a guy who, you could argue either way, is it Olli Maatta or Vejmelka that ended up saving Utah’s season when they lost two of their top-four defensemen for a period of five months in John Marino and Sean Durzi? Maatta comes in and stabilizes it, but it was also at a time when Connor Ingram needed some time away from the rink and his game fell apart. Vejmelka stepped up in a huge way. It was a huge contract season. If you listened to the show yesterday, you heard me tease that Utah had made progress on Vejmelka’s deal by virtue of the deal that Kevin Lankinen had signed in Vancouver. That set the table. I think Vejmelka’s camp was looking to get to $5 million a year on a five-year deal. Utah was at the exact Lankinen deal, and they ended up splitting the difference at $4.75 million. Now they have that locked up for the future as well. They are in a great spot. They don’t have any names hanging over their head at the deadline. They’ve gone out, they’ve made the commitment, and it’s not going to box them out from anything either if they want to make a move. And keep an eye on Utah because I think they are a sneaky contender to not just make the playoffs this season, and beat out Vancouver or Calgary or St. Louis – one of these teams in the mix – but you’ve heard me say many times throughout this year that I think there is no team throughout the NHL that is better prepared to make a big splash and be prepared for the future with their cap space, their contract statuses, their prospect pool, and their picks. There’s no chance that they could possibly even sign all of these guys that they’ve drafted. They don’t have room on the roster limitation, so they are going to have to be very careful with who they keep and who they don’t, which leaves them in an enviable position to go out and chase one of these big names out there. I have zero doubt that Armstrong has been calling and checking in on Mikko Rantanen. He could undoubtedly do it, but I just wonder with this team, at this exact moment in time, could you pull it off, knowing he is likely to be a rental? Could you take that risk?
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here: