{coyotes} 3 questions facing Utah Hockey Club

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1. How do the former players handle the transition?

No team in the NHL is undergoing a more tumultuous offseason than the Utah Hockey Club, which will be playing its first season after the NHL Board of Governors voted on April 18 to establish the franchise.

There are houses to be bought, schools to be found, a whole new infrastructure to make work.

But unlike the expansion teams in Las Vegas in 2017-18 and Seattle in 2021-22, the Utah Hockey Club is made up of an already-in-place team, with players who have been teammates for years. That should help bring some continuity to a situation where there is so much upheaval.

There is excitement in the city, which should help, and there's also now certainty. For a long time, the players didn't know what their future would hold. Now, they do. It'll be up to them how they handle it.

2. How will the team's revamped defenseman group perform?

The Utah Hockey Club made two major acquisitions this offseason, each on the defensive end of the ice. Utah acquired 26-year-old Mikhail Sergachev in a trade with the Tampa Bay Lightning and 27-year-old John Marino in a trade with the New Jersey Devils on June 29.

At the time, coach Andre Tourigny said of Sergachev, "No doubt he's our No. 1 defenseman."

The moves should be massive for a franchise trying to take the next step in its rebuild, with Sergachev signed for eight seasons and Marino for three. They fit nicely into the young core that Utah is building and will help push the pace and move the puck.

But, still, there are questions: How will the defense as a whole perform? How will Sergachev play coming off a broken leg that limited him to 34 games in the regular season before he returned for Tampa Bay's final two games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs?

3. How do their young players continue to progress?

If there's anything the Utah Hockey Club has, it's young talent.

That starts with players like Logan Cooley, 20, Dylan Guenther, 21, Matias Maccelli, 23, and Josh Doan, 22. But those players need to continue to take steps to build on what they've done in the NHL to this point, like the 44 points (20 goals, 24 assists) Cooley had in 82 games during his rookie season in 2023-24 and the 35 points (18 goals, 17 assists) that Guenther had in 45 games last season.

They added two big weapons in the 2024 NHL Draft -- 18-year-old forward Tij Iginla with the No. 6 pick and 18-year-old center Cole Beaudoin with the No. 24 pick -- building on a prospect pool that should be the envy of many clubs.

And with a coach in Tourigny, whose hallmark is working with young players, the future is bright for Utah. How bright it is this season, though, could come down to how soon those players can continue to progress.

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