The Utah Ice Hockey Club have named Clayton Keller of Chesterfield, Missouri as their new captain according to Rogers Sportsnet on Friday. The franchise had 11 captains when the club was based in Winnipeg and known as the original Winnipeg Jets. They then had four captains when the franchise was in Arizona as part of the Phoenix/Arizona Coyotes.
There has been no captain in the Utah Ice Hockey Club/Coyotes organization since defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson of Karlskrona, Sweden was the Coyotes’s captain for three seasons from 2018 to 2021. With the announcement today, the Seattle Kraken is the only franchise in the entire National Hockey League without a captain according to Nick Horwat of Sports Illustrated.
The Kraken have only had one captain all-time in the history of their franchise. That was defenseman Mark Giordano of Toronto, Ontario, who was Seattle’s captain during the 2021-22 season. Giordano was the Seattle leader for 55 games before he was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs on March 20, 2022.
Clayton Keller in 2023-24
In 78 games, Keller had 33 goals and 43 assists for 76 points. He was a -20 with 32 penalty minutes, 30 power-play points, four game-winning goals, 228 shots on goal, 30 faceoff wins, 30 blocked shots, 20 hits, 43 takeaways and 47 giveaways. The one disconcerting statistic is the fact that Keller was a -20. That was the second worst plus/minus for his career, as he was a -21 in 2018-19.
Clayton Keller’s career with the Coyotes
Keller has been with the Coyotes now for eight seasons, and was selected to the All-Star Game four times (2019, 2022, 2023 and 2024). Since being the Coyotes’s first round pick, seventh overall, in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft, Keller has 166 goals and 252 assists for 418 points in 520 games. He is a -61 with 203 penalty minutes, 126 power-play points, four shorthanded points, two hat tricks, 23 game-winning goals, 1348 shots on goal, 173 faceoff wins, 171 blocked shots, 118 hits, 308 takeaways, and 299 giveaways. The hat tricks came in a 5-4 Coyotes win over the Philadelphia Flyers on December 11, 2022, and in a 4-1 Coyotes win over the Vegas Golden Knights on January 22, 2023.
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