SALT LAKE CITY — Mikhail Sergachev was taking out the trash when he found he was being traded to Utah.

“At first, I was in shock. I didn’t expect it,” the defenseman said Friday of his reaction to being sent to the Utah Hockey Club on June 29 in exchange for defenseman J.J. Moser, forward Conor Geekie, a seventh-round pick in the 2024 NHL Draft and a second-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft.

The former Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman knew nothing about Utah before the trade, but speaking to the media for the first time since the deal took place, it didn’t take long for him to see the potential of what can happen with his new team.

“Talking to my agent, talking to some players, and talking to [Clayton] Keller, everybody said great things about Utah and the new franchise. It’s pretty amazing, honestly. The whole setup, the city. I’m very excited. It’s a big opportunity for me to prove myself, being a leader. I’m looking forward to it.”

The 26-year-old had 19 points (two goals, 17 assists) in 34 regular-season games for the Lightning in 2023-24 but missed most of the year because of a knee injury. He returned in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and had one assist in two games.

Despite the lost time on the ice, he comes into the new season as Utah’s top defenseman.

“We are in a situation where we want a proven player,” said Utah head coach Andre Tourigny on Friday. “Sergey is exactly that kind of player. He’s been in championship games, been in pressure games. He was one of those guys who was on the ice in those big moments… We still have a young group of defensemen. He will bring experience. We’re making a step in the right direction.”

When the 2023-24 season concluded, Utah general manager Bill Armstrong had to rebuild his defensive lineup from scratch. When the possibility of a trade for Sergachev came up during the draft, the team took its shot.

“I just thought to myself, as an organization, when do you get a chance?” Armstrong said. “It’s a great chance to add a number one [defenseman] to your roster at 26 years old that’s won two championships… That opportunity doesn’t come around and we jumped on it.”

Sergachev had 257 points (48 goals, 209 assists) in 475 regular-season games, and 34 points (nine goals, 25 assists) in 100 career playoff games over seven seasons in Tampa Bay. He won the Stanley Cup in 2020 and 2021 as a top-four defenseman with the Lightning.

In addition to his offensive ability on the blue line, he brings a physical presence to Utah’s defense.

“Obviously I love hitting, but you try to be smart about that when you play 25, 27, or 23 minutes,” Sergachev said. “I’m just going to use my legs, use my speed, and when I need to, I’m going to lay a hit. But for me, it’s not all about that. It’s about being aggressive everywhere, not just on defense, but on offense, too.”

Sergachev will also step into a leadership role with Utah, which will head into the 2024-25 season as one of the youngest rosters in the NHL. 

“I don’t really like speaking a lot. I kind of follow the leaders that I had before, like [Steven Stamkos] and [Victor Hedman],” Sergachev said. “Most of the time they just play, they go out there and show by their example what they can do, and that speaks for itself. I feel like I’m going to do the same, and I’m just going to focus on that. Playing the right way and try to win as many games as possible.”

President Joe Biden declined to commit to undertaking an independent cognitive test amid concerns about his age and mental acuity after his debate against former President Donald Trump.

“Look, I have a cognitive test every single day,” Biden told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos during his first post-debate interview. “Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning but I’m running the world. Sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world.”

“Watch me between — there’s a lot of time left in this campaign,” he said before denying he is frail.

Biden did concede he can no longer “run the 100 in 10 flat” but contended he is in “good shape” and dared Stephanopoulos to “come keep my schedule.”

When pressed whether he was the same man who became president four years ago, Biden argued, “In terms of successes, yes.”

“I just think it cost me a really bad night — a bad run,” he said when asked about the toll his first four years in office have had on his body.

In an exchange about the debate, Biden distinguished the debate as a “bad episode” and not symptomatic of a “condition,” a question posed by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

“It was a bad episode,” he said. “No indication of any serious condition. I was exhausted. I didn’t listen to my instincts in terms of preparing and — and a bad night.”

When pushed on the downtime he had at Camp David after his trips to Europe, Biden repeated that he had been sick and was “feeling terrible.”

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“Matter of fact, the docs with me, I asked them,” he said. “They did a COVID test because we were trying to figure out what was wrong. They did a test to see whether or not I had some infection, you know, a virus. I didn’t. I just had a really bad cold.”

Biden added he did not “think” he watched the debate afterward, though he did not blame aides for his poor performance.

Some energy industry participants in next week’s Wyoming-led oil and gas lease auction are wondering if the Wyoming Outdoor Council will try to scuttle the sale, or some activist billionaire for that matter.

Electronic auctions to buy oil and gas leases on state-owned land can be challenging.

Anonymous bidders in auctions operated over a private online network by Wyoming’s Office of State Land Investments don’t always tell the full story of an entity’s ulterior motives.

Take, for example, a July 12, 2023, lease auction when executives with Casper-based oil and gas firm Kirkwood Cos. ran into such a problem.

This is when top executives of Kirkwood and land technicians who understood the value of geologic formations and how to switch over to a backup computer in case it’s needed huddled in the conference room of the family run oil and gas business to bid on a few leases in a 2-minute auction process.

Steve Kirkwood, owner and partner, was at the table, as was No. 2 executive Steve Degenfelder, land manager for the company with more than 3,500 wells in six Rocky Mountain states.

The auction goes quick, and there is little time to think about who is bidding on what, or by how much.

Kirkwood had its eyes on a total of 1,280 acres covering two tracts of land in Sublette County, Degenfelder said.

“There’s an enormous accumulation of gas there,” Degenfelder told Cowboy State Daily of his company’s appetite for oil and natural gas land in the state’s auction.

Rich In Gas

The Bureau of Land Management says the Sublette County land where Kirkwood had interest has one of the richest concentrations of natural gas in the U.S., currently estimated at more than 25 trillion cubic feet.

Kirkwood had its eyes on two tracts in what is technically known as the west flank of the Pinedale (Wyoming) anticline natural gas field in the Upper Green River Basin of west-central Wyoming, located in dusty sagebrush territory just south of Pinedale.

Environmental conservation groups have a disdain for exploration and drilling in this region.

The Nature Conservancy calls the Upper Green River as Wyoming’s take on the Serengeti plains of East Africa, a natural bottleneck where wildlife moves through ancient migratory pathways.

The migration of pronghorn and mule deer from summer ranges in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem mountain highlands to winter stomping grounds in the Upper Green River Basin’s sagebrush-covered valley is one of the longest in the continental United States.

“We were bidding on some tracts, and we became the successful bidder,” said Degenfelder, whose suspicions on the auction were aroused when he was contacted by an official with the Wyoming Outdoor Council who left a voicemail on his phone.

The senior official with the statewide conservation advocacy group wanted to know if Degenfelder would be willing to give up the leases.

When Degenfelder returned the call, he was told that the two tracts that his company bid on were in an “antelope migratory bottleneck” and that drilling on the land could impact the pronghorn who live there.

The Wyoming Outdoor Council official also admitted to Degenfelder that it was his group that had engaged in a bidding war with Kirkwood and had significantly driven up the price of the two tracts.

Driving Up Costs

“We estimated that we overpaid on the land by $14,000,” Degenfelder said.

“We would have gotten it for $6 an acre had the Wyoming Outdoor Council not been bidding,” he said. “This is very exploratory acreage, and that $19 an acre doesn’t sound like much, but this is for exploration, which is the first thing you need to do before getting a lease.

“There is concern for billionaires like (Michael) Bloomberg or (Bill) Gates or (Warren) Buffett putting in bids for these leases with no intention of ever developing them for oil and gas.”

This could wreak havoc on a state like Wyoming, which depends on oil and gas revenue for funding everything from education to penitentiaries.

Carl Fisher, executive director of Wyoming Outdoor Council, did not return phone calls or emails seeking comment on his conversancy group’s strategy in last July’s auction and whether the group would attempt to engage in the same type of bidding process in next week’s scheduled auction.

Degenfelder said that the OSLI turned down his company’s request to be reimbursed in the land auction for overpayment of several thousands of dollars.

“Our request was turned down,” he said.

Dianna Wolvin, the OSLI senior lands management specialist, did not return phone calls or emails seeking comment about the dispute with Kirkwood.

Emergency Help

This week, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon ran interference on the issue with the hope that this doesn’t happen again.

The governor signed an emergency order to implement changes in next week’s state-led oil and gas lease auction to keep environmental activist groups like the Wyoming Outdoor Council from driving up bids and taking energy-rich properties out of the hands of developers.

During the 2024 Legislature, lawmakers passed State House Bill 141, which redefined qualified bidders.

The State Board of Land Commissioners approved the rule changes at its June 6 meeting as part of its regular business.

Since the auction is scheduled for July 8-10, the board also approved emergency rules to implement the changes before the auction to ferret out unqualified bidders.

The new law requires the OSLI, which runs the auction three times a year, to determine a qualified bidder and nip in the bud any shenanigans in advance.

Not The First Time

This isn’t the first time that the OSLI has encountered problems with outsiders trying to hurt Wyoming’s interests.

James Magagna, vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, told Cowboy State Daily that a similar problem erupted about 15 years ago when the Jon Marvel-backed Western Watersheds Project in Hailey, Idaho, attempted to foil his bid to renew leases on state-owned land that had been in his family for more than a century.

“It happened to me personally,” Magagna said.

Magagna had used his state-leased land in the southeast corner of Sublette County to graze more than 8,000 sheep, but the Western Watersheds Project tried to outbid him because the group believes in “livestock-free public lands.”

Marvel retired in 2014 from the group he formed in 1993, where he became a major player in the legal fight over protecting the sage grouse and its habitat. Marvel also gained a reputation for bidding against ranchers for grazing rights.

He drove up the prices of those grazing rights through legal battles with ranchers over their operations’ effects on water quality and wildlife habitat.

Eventually, the Legislature came to the aid of Magagna.

“What saved me was the fact that Western Watershed wasn’t properly registered to do business in the state of Wyoming. They are now, but not then,” Magagna said.

“We eventually got Wyoming legislation passed that said if you bid on state trust lands to lease, then you must have a necessary use for the land, like a business for grazing livestock,” he said. “Based on my experience, perhaps legislation is still needed.”

Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.