Legends in the making: Meet the Utah Hockey Club defensemen

With less than a month to go until the first Utah Hockey Club preseason game, now’s the time to get to know the team. This is the third in a three-article series introducing the players to Utah.
Heading into the draft, Utah had zero defensemen signed to NHL deals. They’ve since filled out their roster and it looks solid.
Without further ado, the Utah Hockey Club defensemen.
If you follow the Deseret News’ coverage of hockey, you’ve probably already been introduced to Mikhail Sergachev, the “Harry Potter” geek who plays in the NHL as a two-way defenseman for his day job. On the off chance you haven’t met him, here’s a quick introduction.
Utah acquired Sergachev from the Tampa Bay Lightning during the second day of the draft to fill a role that the team desperately needed to fill: No. 1 defenseman. There are only so many true top defensemen in the league, so when General Manager Bill Armstrong got the opportunity to acquire one, he pounced on it.
Sergachev is a balanced player. He creates chances offensively, and is good for about 55 points a year when he’s healthy. He’s also tenacious defensively and has no hesitation to play a physical game. All of this was important in his two Stanley Cup championships with the Lightning.
When Sergachev isn’t modeling for Lexus, he’s probably spending time with his wife and his 1-year-old son.
Sean Durzi has had to work hard for everything he’s ever had. He was eligible for the 2017 NHL draft but never got selected. He didn’t let the disappointment get him down and he came back swinging. His effort was enough for the Toronto Maple Leafs to take him in the second round of the following draft.
On the ice, Durzi is an offensive threat. He runs the powerplay and puts up roughly half a point per game. He also prides himself in the fact that he can play both the right and left sides. He plays a lot more time in the offensive zone than in the defensive zone, which means he has less chance of getting scored on than many others.
An interesting fact about Durzi: While he was playing in the OHL, doctors discovered that he had an extra bone growing in his ankle. It caused him great discomfort, so he had to get it removed, causing him to miss a significant portion of the season.
Minutes after acquiring Sergachev at the draft, Utah HC traded for another defenseman: John Marino, formerly of the New Jersey Devils.
The Devils caught the injury bug last year — particularly to star defenseman Dougie Hamilton — forcing Marino to play on the top pairing, where he struggled to fend off teams’ best players night after night. Don’t take that as a sleight to Marino: He did fine given the circumstances. He just would have had a much better chance to succeed on the second pairing, which is where he’ll likely slot in for Utah.
Like Alex Kerfoot, Marino graduated from Harvard. The two even played there together for a year. Kerfoot, a senior at the time, was the captain. Marino was a freshman.
Fun fact: Bill Armstrong was on the St. Louis Blues’ scouting staff when they drafted Ian Cole in 2007. Now, 17 years later, the two reunite in Utah.
Cole is on his fifth team of the last five years. That’s not to say that he’s not a valuable player — he is. It’s just that teams hesitate to sign older players to long-term contracts, so he’s had one-year deal after one-year deal. He comes with the most experience of any player on the Utah HC roster, having played 955 NHL games, regular season and playoffs combined.
With the Vancouver Canucks last season, Cole played a solid defensive role. If you watched him play against the Edmonton Oilers in the second round, though, you might not believe that. Cole was on the unlucky end of several weird bounces that ended up in his own net during the series, putting a damper on an otherwise great season for the 35-year-old.
Like Sergachev, Cole brings two Stanley Cup rings with him. He knows what it takes to win and teaching that to this young team will be at the top of his job description.
The son of a pro hockey player and a college basketball player, Michael Kesselring was destined to be athletic. Kesselring spent the majority of last season with the Coyotes and he should be a permanent fixture on the roster this year.
Though he’s not known for his offense, Kesselring scored 21 points in 65 games last year — not too shabby. His strengths lie in his physicality and his positional play. He could very well develop into a long-term shutdown defenseman for the club.
Kesselring was once traded for current teammate Nick Bjugstad. Bjugstad played out the rest of the regular season and playoffs that year with the Edmonton Oilers before signing back with the Coyotes in free agency.
With the move to Utah, previously honored numbers are now available, as this is technically a new franchise. For that reason, Kesselring is switching his jersey number from five to seven — a number that was unavailable because it belonged to Coyotes legend Keith Tkachuk.
The Coyotes claimed Juuso Valimaki off waivers from the Calgary Flames in 2022 — a move that the Flames probably wish they could take back, now that most of their big-name defensemen have moved on. At the time, Valimaki was the extra man in a deep defensive corps. Now, he’s a valuable piece of a rebuilding team.
Valimaki was a healthy scratch on a number of occasions last year to make room for players like Kesselring and Victor Soderstrom. While it may seem on the surface that Valimaki struggled, that’s not the case — he actually played quite well. Rather, the Coyotes had lots of young guys they wanted to plug into roster spots to facilitate their development. It’s an indication that the team has lots of good, young players ready to make the lineup.
The addition of Robert Bortuzzo raises Utah HC’s average age about six months. They’ve passed the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Anaheim Ducks and are now the fifth-youngest team in the NHL. That’s not to say Bortuzzo is an old man or anything — he’s only 35. The team is just young.
Bortuzzo is a veteran defenseman with a Stanley Cup ring in his pocket. He has been a seventh defenseman most of his career, subbing in when needed. With a two-way contract in Utah, that’s likely the role he’ll play: veteran guy who doesn’t mind taking a turn in the press box every now and then.
Utah now has two pairs of players who were traded for each other: Michael Kesselring for Nick Bjugstad, as previously mentioned, and Bortuzzo for Ian Cole. The Pittsburgh Penguins sent Bortuzzo and a seventh-round pick to Bill Armstrong’s St. Louis Blues in exchange for Cole. Both players went on to win the Stanley Cup with their new teams — an extremely rare occurrence, but a sure indication that the trade was beneficial for both squads.