NHL's Utah Hockey Club restocks Tucson Roadrunners' AHL roster with mix of new, familiar faces

Utah Hockey Club, the Roadrunners’ new NHL affiliate in place of the now-dormant Arizona Coyotes, kicked off the moves in late June, a few days before the NHL draft.

On June 25 Utah signed defensemen Vladislav Kolyachonok to a two-year contract that is a two-way deal for 2024-25 and a one-way for 2025-26. After playing 32 games with the Coyotes in 2021-22, he saw seven combined NHL games in 2022-23 and 2023-24. He’s also played 140 games for Tucson in the last three seasons; last year, in 38 games for the Roadrunners, he had eight goals.

On June 30, Utah issued qualifying offers to 2023-24 two-way contracted Coyotes/Roadrunners players in forwards Jan Jenik, Milos Kelemen, Curtis Douglas and defenseman Victor Soderstrom.

On July 1, Utah signed defenseman Kevin Connauton to a two-year, two-way contract. He was an alternate captain for the AHL’s Ontario Reign last season and had four assists in eight games against the Roadrunners.

A day later, Utah HC signed left wing Travis Barron to a one-year, two-way contract and left wing Andrew Agozzino to a two-year, two-way deal. Barron is ninth all-time with 249 games for the Roadrunners, and 2024-25 could be his fourth season in Tucson.

Agozzino has played for five NHL teams and finished seventh in the AHL in scoring with 26 goals and 38 assists for 64 points. He is a three-time AHL all-star and has been captain or alternate captain for eight seasons in the league.

And the moves kept rolling since.

Keleman, with greater than 110 games of AHL experience, signed a one-year, two way contract.

On July 4, Utah dealt Jenik — top five all-time in Roadrunners points (120), goals (46) and assists (74) in 165 games with Tucson —to the NHL’s Ottawa Senators; in return, Utah picked up forward Egor Sokolov, a 21-goal scorer each of the last two seasons with the AHL’s Belleville Senators.

And then Friday morning, Utah inked goaltender Jaxson Stauber to a one-year, two-way contract. InsideAHLHockey.com ranked Stauber, who has played in six career NHL games and was 18-8-3 with a 2.85 goals against average and .902 save percentage in 31 appearances with the Rockford Ice Hogs last year, as the fifth-ranked free agent goalie among would-be AHL regulars. He’s expected to compete with Dylan Wells for backup minutes in Tucson behind Roadrunners’ All-Star goalie Matthew Villalta.

While Villalta was resigned to a two-year, two-way deal by Utah on June 19 after leading the AHL in wins and games played in net in 2023-24 for Tucson, Wells is among five players the Star can confirm the Roadrunners have signed to AHL contracts. The others: right wing Austin Poganski, center Cameron Hebig, right wing Hunter Drew and left wing Will Gavin.

Poganski, Hebig and Drew join Wells as Tucson returnees, while Gavin joins after playing for Air Force.

Gavin is among the last AFA graduates to be able to pursue a professional sports career before fulfilling their military service requirements though House lawmakers may extend that in the next annual defense budget bill.

Poganski got a two-year contract; the other AHL deals were for one year each.

When the ownership of the Arizona Coyotes sold the NHL team’s hockey operations to a new Salt Lake City-based ownership group, it held on to the Roadrunners. In the case of independently owned AHL teams that have affiliate agreements like the Roadrunners and Utah HC, the NHL club pays all contracted players — even those on AHL-only contracts.

In addition to the Jenik trade, recent Roadrunners to move on so far this offseason (according to InsideAHLHockey.com’s free agent tracker): defenseman Cam Crotty (two-way deal with NHL’s Minnesota Wild), forward Justin Kirkland (two-way deal with NHL’s Calgary Flames), John Leonard (AHL deal with Charlotte Checkers), Nathan Smith (two-way deal with NHL’s Vancouver Canucks).

Summer campin’

This week, Utah HC hosted its first Development Camp.

The camp ran Monday through Friday (July 1-5) and featured 32 players, including a number of likely future Roadrunners. All 11 of Utah HC’s 2024 draft picks attended.

Participants like forward Sam Lipkin and goalie Anson Thornton are players who were Roadrunners in 2023-24. Led by Tucson head coach Steve Potvin, all of the Roadrunners coaches, trainers and equipment managers were in Salt Lake City for the camp; that also includes Tucson general manager and John Ferguson and director of hockey operations Jake Wagman.

The camp concluded Friday with a scrimmage at the Delta Center, Utah’s home arena starting in 2024-25.

Nothin’ but (ice) time

Although Tucson’s last dedicated ice rink closed in 2007, hockey’s popularity has grown in the Old Pueblo among players. Local officials say that’s specifically since the Roadrunners came to town in 2016.

“Since the Roadrunners have been here there has been a huge increase in youth and adult league hockey, Tucson Arena general manager Glenn Grabski said, “to the point that the demand for ice time has nearly doubled.

“We’re running out of time,” he added, noting that the situation has pros and cons to it. “There’s only 24 hours in a day, so very thankful for that as well.”

Youth and adult hockey players fill the TCC ice on weeknights and weekends and adults sometimes play on Sunday nights or weekdays after the Roadrunners’ practice in the late morning.

Construction on the Iceplex portion of the Mosaic Quarter at Kino Sports South Complex — a facility that’s planned to have two community rinks, and a third that could hold up to 3,000 spectators, is supposed to be done in late 2025.

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