The Utah Hockey Club made a big splash at its first draft, acquiring Mikhail Sergachev from the Tampa Bay Lightning.Pooched the season? Blew it in the playoffs? Got all the wrong guys and no clue how to get rid of them? No problem.This go-along-to-get-along attitude is never more obvious than at the draft. It’s the post-Cup moment when all sins are forgiven and that hard-working, character-first kid you got in the second round is going to change things.
Mock drafts had this guy at first? Then he goes first. This guy at second? Then he goes second. This guy at third and – whoa whoa whoa – he wentAnyone inclined to take risks knows how that will end – with a big hug that slips into a headlock and before you know it you’re being exited the office via the window. The special hockey twist is that after they’ve got you airborne, someone leans out and yells, “Mutually agreed upon,” right before you hit the ground.
Sergachev is the sort of player every team needs, but won’t do what’s necessary to acquire. He doesn’t win awards. He will never be on a video-game cover. But come the playoffs, he is a 6-foot-3 pair of elbows in search of skulls to soften. If you google ‘antonyms to a Toronto Maple Leaf,’ Sergachev is your No. 1 hit.
So far, Utah is following the back-to-front, no-bold-face-names-required strategy that paid off for Vegas at its inception seven years ago. It will be a hard out rather than a high flyer. That’s sort of like the team that just won the Stanley Cup, and not at all like the teams that get all the press.
Who didn’t have any big-name brands? The champion Panthers. Aleksander Barkov won the Selke, but that’s like the jazz performance of the NHL Awards. It gets handed out during a commercial break. Every team with fans who feel like GM’ing is a plebiscite situation chooses the star route. That frees teams like Florida, Carolina, Vegas and Dallas to go the other way.