{"id":480861,"date":"2025-12-29T14:11:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T19:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=480861"},"modified":"2025-12-29T14:11:40","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T19:11:40","slug":"utah-mammoth-karel-vejmelka-placed-on-ir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2025\/12\/29\/utah-mammoth-karel-vejmelka-placed-on-ir\/","title":{"rendered":"Utah Mammoth Place Goaltender on IR"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2025\/12\/27\/sean-durzis-return-gives-utah-mammoth-what-they-were-missing\/\" target=\"_self\">Utah Mammoth<\/a> have placed goaltender <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/v\/vejmeka01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-12-29_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Karel Vejmelka<\/a> on injured reserve. Vejmelka was originally deemed day-to-day with an upper-body injury, but now he\u2019ll officially miss Monday\u2019s home game against the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2025\/12\/29\/nhl-predictions-nashville-predators-vs-utah-mammoth\/\" target=\"_self\">Nashville Predators<\/a>. Since it was retroactive to December 23rd, he can return as soon as Thursday, on the road versus the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/category\/islanders\/#google_vignette\" target=\"_self\">New York Islanders<\/a>. Still, there\u2019s no timetable for Vejmelka\u2019s return. In a corresponding move, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/v\/villama01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-12-29_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Matt Villalta<\/a> was called up from Utah&#8217;s AHL affiliate, the Tucson Roadrunners.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">ROSTER UPDATE<\/p>\n<p>The <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/utahmammoth?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@utahmammoth<\/a> have recalled goaltender Matt Villalta from the Tucson Roadrunners (AHL)<\/p>\n<p>Goaltender Karel Vejmelka has been placed on IR (upper-body) retroactive to 12\/23<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Utah Mammoth PR (@UtahMammoth_PR) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/UtahMammoth_PR\/status\/2005685412086591676?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">December 29, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Karel Vejmelka Placed on IR With Upper-Body Injury<\/h2>\n<p>The injury bug continues to hit the Mammoth. It was bad enough to lose <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/c\/coolelo01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-12-29_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Logan Cooley<\/a>, but suffering an injury to the starting goalie certainly doesn\u2019t help. Vejmelka has been the backbone of the Mammoth for nearly five years. The 29-year-old appeared in a career-high 58 games last season, winning 26. This year, Vejmelka has compiled a 16-10-2 record, a 2.70 goals-against average and an .894 save percentage. His play has kept Utah afloat in the Western Conference 2026 Stanley Cup Playoff Wild Card position race, but the Mammoth are in a tough Central Division.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to the injury, Vejmelka won in four of his last five starts.<\/p>\n<h2>Utah Will Have To Rely on Their Backup<\/h2>\n<p>As long as Vejmelka is out, backup goaltender <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/v\/vanecvi01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-12-29_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Vitek Vanecek<\/a> will see the bulk of the starts. While he\u2019s in, Vanecek will be asked to step up and carry the workload. Vanecek hasn\u2019t had the nicest start to the year, going 2-8-1, with a 2.81 goals-against average and a .882 save percentage. Should Vanecek rediscover his game during Vejmelka\u2019s absence, this stretch could serve as a reset after his difficult start. He\u2019ll get his first chance to show that on Monday versus the Predators. From there on out, it is anyone&#8217;s guess, especially if Vanecek falter. But we can expect he gets the opportunity to start, before tapping too far into the farm.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credit: Rob Gray &#8211; Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Utah Mammoth have placed goaltender Karel Vejmelka on injured reserve. Vejmelka was originally deemed day-to-day with an upper-body injury, but now he\u2019ll officially miss Monday\u2019s home game against the Nashville Predators. Since it was retroactive to December 23rd, he can return as soon as Thursday, on the road versus the New York Islanders. Still, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5373,"featured_media":464018,"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":[7025],"class_list":["post-480861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mammoth","category-hockey","category-injuries","category-news","category-nhl","tag-karel-vejmelka"],"modified_by":"Levi Pike, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480861","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=480861"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":480897,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480861\/revisions\/480897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}