Utah’s NHL team will be active building up their blueline this summer

A relocated franchise has the opportunity to put together a competitive team right away, and they will likely start on the back end.

NHL Utah—formerly known as the Arizona Coyotes—has been greeted with a lot of fanfare since Salt Lake City received a franchise last month. While everything off the ice is looking good, the on-ice product for year one in the new market will be important in establishing a new fan base.

Fortunately for Utah, the team has a lot of spending room, over $43 million in projected cap space as it stands. That will give Utah an opportunity to bolster their d-core, though they do not have much of a choice.

Currently, the franchise has just three defensemen signed through next season (excluding Shea Weber), and none of them finished the season on the active roster. Sean Durzi (RFA), Travis Demott (UFA) and Joshua Brown (UFA) are a few blueliners without a deal.

However, that means general manager Bill Armstrong, and new alternate governor Chirs Armstrong, could make some moves to bring in new faces and give Utah a stable group on defense.

On Thursday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk talked about what NHL Utah could be doing this offseason.

Frank Seravalli: They don’t have any defensemen under contract, that’s going to eat up a lot of [cap space]. When I had a chance to chat with Bill Armstrong…I’m sure he’s excited to work with a team that actually has resources for the first time, same thing [head coach] Andre Tourigny, but “We got to get through the summer, and not do anything stupid.” They got a ton of [draft] picks to play from, they can make some aggressive, interesting trades from that position of strength of cap space and futures.

You can watch the entire segment, and the full episode here…