{"id":464481,"date":"2025-03-10T16:12:56","date_gmt":"2025-03-10T20:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=464481"},"modified":"2025-03-11T11:48:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T15:48:18","slug":"valimaki-injury-rest-of-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2025\/03\/10\/valimaki-injury-rest-of-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Utah Hockey Club Defenceman To Miss Rest of Season After ACL Surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some bad news has come down for one Western Conference team. <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2025\/03\/06\/utah-hockey-club-injury-news-hours-ahead-of-trade-deadline\/\" target=\"_self\">Utah Hockey Club<\/a> general manager <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/a\/armstbi01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-10_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bill Armstrong<\/a> announced Monday that defenceman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/v\/valimju01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-10_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Juuso Valimaki<\/a> underwent successful surgery to repair a torn ACL. He is expected to miss eight to nine months. He produced five points, 40 shots on goal and 49 blocked shots in 43 games for Utah this season. Valimaki also averaged 16:33 of ice time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">INJURY UPDATE <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/3afFyEzSEL\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/3afFyEzSEL<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Utah Mammoth PR (@UtahMammoth_PR) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/UtahMammoth_PR\/status\/1899113052370620786?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 10, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Juuso Valimaki&#8217;s Season Over Due to Injury<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Valimaki cleared waivers in late February and was sent down to Utah\u2019s American Hockey League affiliate, Tucson Roadrunners. He played one game for the Roadrunners before getting injured. The 26-year-old will be out for the remainder of this year and training camp for next season.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Valimaki could miss the beginning of the 2025-2026 campaign as well. The Tampere<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Finland native has another year left on his contract that carries a cap hit of $2 million, per <a  href=\"https:\/\/puckpedia.com\/player\/juuso-valimaki\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">PuckPedia<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 6\u20192\u201d left-handed defenceman was a first-round draft pick (16th overall) by the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/category\/flames\/\" target=\"_self\">Calgary Flames<\/a> in 2017. Valimaki was claimed off waivers by the<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2024\/07\/11\/nhl-sweaters-best-and-worst-of-the-arizona-coyotes\/\" target=\"_self\"> Arizona Coyotes<\/a> from the Flames in 2022. Utah re-signed him in June after the team moved to Salt Lake City. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He last played for Utah on Jan. 26.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Valimaki&#8217;s best season of his career came in 2022-2023 with the Coyotes, where he had four goals and 30 assists for 34 points in 78 games.<\/p>\n<h3>What The Juuso Valimaki Injury Means<\/h3>\n<p>Valimaki&#8217;s injury impacts Utah&#8217;s organizational depth on defence, which has suffered numerous injuries all season. However, he fell out of favor once <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/d\/durzise01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-10_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sean Durzi<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/m\/marinjo01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-10_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">John Marino<\/a> returned from their respective injuries. Utah is still right in the middle of a Stanley Cup Playoff push.<\/p>\n<p>Despite being 28-25-10, the team is four points back of the Flames for the second wildcard spot in the Western Conference. Utah looks to gain some ground in the race as they return to the ice Monday for a matchup with the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/category\/leafs\/\" target=\"_self\">Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Main photo by: Marc DesRosiers-Imagn Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some bad news has come down for one Western Conference team. Utah Hockey Club general manager Bill Armstrong announced Monday that defenceman Juuso Valimaki underwent successful surgery to repair a torn ACL. He is expected to miss eight to nine months. He produced five points, 40 shots on goal and 49 blocked shots in 43 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5373,"featured_media":464508,"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":[21,4547,6671,34,4548],"tags":[4522,948,3348,8101],"class_list":["post-464481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mammoth","category-hockey","category-injuries","category-news","category-nhl","tag-john-marino","tag-juuso-valimaki","tag-sean-durzi","tag-utah-hockey-club-news"],"modified_by":"Colton Osmond, Dept Manager","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464481","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=464481"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":464555,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464481\/revisions\/464555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}