{"id":464023,"date":"2025-03-06T00:59:08","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T05:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=464023"},"modified":"2025-03-06T00:59:37","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T05:59:37","slug":"goalie-karel-vejmelka-contract-extension-utah-hockey-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2025\/03\/06\/goalie-karel-vejmelka-contract-extension-utah-hockey-club\/","title":{"rendered":"Utah Hockey Club Re-Sign Goaltender to Contract Extension"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to insider Pierre LeBrun of TSN, the Utah Hockey Club re-signed goaltender <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/v\/vejmeka01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-06_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Karel Vejmelka<\/a> to a five-year contract extension. The deal is worth $23.75 million total, with a $4.75 million average annual value. Not unsurprisingly, it also makes <a  href=\"https:\/\/puckpedia.com\/player\/karel-vejmelka\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Vejmelka the highest paid goalie<\/a> on Utah. He would have been an unrestricted free agent on July 1st, but clearly Utah wants him to be one of their goalies in the future.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Utah has also re-signed goalie Karel Vemejlka to a five-year contract x $4.75M AAV per season<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PierreVLeBrun\/status\/1897498311889649794?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 6, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Karel Vejmelka Re-Signs Contract with the Club from Utah<\/h3>\n<p>Vejmelka was originally a fifth-round draft pick (145th overall) by the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2025\/03\/05\/pittsburgh-penguins-trade-forward-to-the-nashville-predators\/\" target=\"_self\">Nashville Predators<\/a> in 2015. A good comparable to this deal, is the contract the Vancouver Canucks gave goaltender <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/l\/lankike01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-06_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kevin Lankinen<\/a>. The 28-year-old has been outstanding and is a big reason why Utah sits just four points out of the wild card.<\/p>\n<h3>Fortifying the Crease<\/h3>\n<p>Although Vejmelka has an even record of 16-16-4 over 38 games this season, it\u2019s not indicative of how he has played. Vejmelka has posted a respectable .910 SV% \u00a0and a 2.45 GAA. However, he has been a busy goalie all season long. Vejmelka ranks\u00a0<a  href=\"https:\/\/moneypuck.com\/goalies.htm\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tenth<\/a>\u00a0in the league among all goaltenders in goals saved above expected with a number of 14.3. The 6\u20194\u201d right-handed goalie has been Utah\u2019s anchor throughout the season. Especially when <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/i\/ingraco01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-06_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Connor Ingram<\/a> missed time with an injury. Vejmelka was forced to play back-back games on a few occasions, which is very rare for any team. Therefore, he has shown he is able to elevate his play when required. Even if Utah doesn\u2019t often find themselves in meaningful games.<\/p>\n<p>Vejmelka has won four of his last five starts, helping Utah earn crucial points in the team\u2019s playoff push. The four wins were done consecutively, while giving up two or less goals in each. Other than Vejmelka, Utah took care of other business by <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2025\/03\/05\/the-utah-hockey-club-re-sign-two-key-veterans\/\" target=\"_self\">re-signing two key defencemen<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/m\/maattol01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-06_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Olli Maatta<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/c\/coleia01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-06_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ian Cole<\/a>. It is likely that he will get the majority of starts going forward to end the season, but Vejmelka&#8217;s contract extension shows his importance to Utah. The goaltender has certainly earned the new deal.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credit: Rob Gray-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to insider Pierre LeBrun of TSN, the Utah Hockey Club re-signed goaltender Karel Vejmelka to a five-year contract extension. The deal is worth $23.75 million total, with a $4.75 million average annual value. Not unsurprisingly, it also makes Vejmelka the highest paid goalie on Utah. He would have been an unrestricted free agent on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5373,"featured_media":463394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,4547,34,4548],"tags":[260,7025,608,8101],"class_list":["post-464023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mammoth","category-hockey","category-news","category-nhl","tag-ian-cole","tag-karel-vejmelka","tag-olli-maatta","tag-utah-hockey-club-news"],"modified_by":"Levi Pike, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5373"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464023"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":464050,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464023\/revisions\/464050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}