8 current Utah Hockey Club players who have been traded for each other

Whenever a trade happens, the players involved are tied at the hip the rest of their careers. Fans are obsessed with determining which team won the trade and which team lost it.
If you don’t believe me, scroll through Vancouver Canucks X — it won’t take long to find a Canucks fan comparing Conor Garland to Dylan Guenther, who were involved in a trade between the Canucks and the Arizona Coyotes in 2021.
Every now and then, though, players who were traded for each other end up on the same team. Sure, there are still winners and losers in the trade, but there’s no sense comparing the players to each other after that.
The Utah Hockey Club has four instances where that is exactly the case.
Just before the 2023 NHL trade deadline, the Edmonton Oilers acquired Nick Bjugstad and Cam Dineen from the Coyotes in exchange for Michael Kesselring and a third-round pick, which turned into Utah HC prospect Vadim Moroz.
At a time of the year where there seems to be another trade every time you look at your phone, this one was relatively small. But its impact helps Utah immensely today.
Kesselring has become a core member of Utah’s defense group — especially with the injuries that have sidelined Sean Durzi and John Marino.
Bjugstad rejoined the Coyotes as a free agent that offseason, signing a two-year contract worth $2.1 million annually.
Funny enough, Bjugstad has been traded for his current teammates twice, four years apart.
This one took place a little more than three weeks before the 2019 trade deadline. The Florida Panthers traded Bjugstad and Jared McCann to the Pittsburgh Penguins for Derick Brassard, Riley Sheahan, a second-round pick and two fourth-round picks.
The Panthers used the second-rounder to select current Utah HC defenseman Vladislav Kolyachonok.
Before Kolyachonok ever played a game in the NHL, the Panthers traded him to the Coyotes, and he’s now blooming into an important member of Utah’s core of young players.
Back in 2015, the St. Louis Blues sent Ian Cole to the Pittsburgh Penguins for Robert Bortuzzo and a seventh-round pick. Utah HC general manager Bill Armstrong, who was the Blues’ director of amateur scouting at the time, signed both players this summer.
Here’s an interesting note: Both players won the Stanley Cup with their new teams after that trade. If there was ever a trade that both teams ended up being happy with, it has to be this one. That being said, Cole and the Penguins won the Stanley Cup twice, while Bortuzzo and the Blues only captured it once.
Olli Määttä, the most recent addition to the Utah HC roster, was once traded for a draft pick that turned into Utah prospect Aku Räty.
It was the summer of 2019, a week before the draft. The Penguins had suffered their second consecutive early playoff exit and they concluded that speedy forward Dominik Kahun, then a member of the Chicago Blackhawks, was one of the players they needed.
The price was Määttä, though the Blackhawks threw in a 2019 fifth-round pick. The Penguins would send that pick to the Coyotes a week later with two other picks to move up in the draft.
As you may have guessed, that fifth-round pick was the one the Coyotes used to select Räty.
Interestingly enough, the Coyotes also picked up a fourth-round pick in that trade, with which they selected Matias Maccelli.