Love at first sight in Utah Hockey Club’s inaugural NHL game

Credit: Oct 8, 2024; Salt Lake City, Utah, USA; The Utah Hockey Club is introduced to the fans before the game against the Chicago Blackhawks at Delta Center. Mandatory Credit: Rob Gray-Imagn Images

SALT LAKE CITY — Buzz. Nerves. Excitement. Fit checks. Eagerness to impress. The kind of energy that only a highly anticipated, curious introduction can produce.

Watching Tuesday night’s inaugural Utah Hockey Club game through the lens of thousands attending their first NHL game was a little like witnessing a first blind date from across a cafe.

Utah, meet your Hockey Club – and the NHL.

Hockey Club, meet your new home.

There was no shortage of usual first-date questions: How would Delta Center look? What will their personality be like? Will it be awkward at all? Will they hit it off?

And then 7-foot Jazz All-Star Lauri Markkanen skated out to deliver the ceremonial puck, extending a welcoming hand from Utah’s one major professional sport to another, and a budding romance was sparked.

Everyone might have been holding their breath, because captain Clayton Keller revealed the Finnish-born Markkanen had fallen on the ice in a morning rehearsal, but Markkanen met the moment and glided around with ease. The Delta Center crowd roared and Keller slid in for the face-off.

And Dylan Guenther scored twice to lead Utah to an inaugural, 5-2 win over the Chicago Blackhawks.

“Something I’ll remember forever,” Keller said.

The beauty of this romance, after inheriting the fragile heart of a defeated Arizona Coyotes franchise, is that it looks destined to be forever.

“It feels like we’re catching each other at the perfect moment,” Utah Hockey Club co-owner Ashley Smith said on Tuesday.

It was an unforgettable night – for the former Coyotes, for proud Utahns, and not insignificantly, the NHL itself. The NHL is now, at least for the moment, fully complete at 32 teams – no longer at 31.5. For a large majority of commissioner Gary Bettman’s 31-year tenure, he’s been forced to play the role of part-time firefighter, putting out fires with various problem franchises. The NHL map has never been stronger.

What the NHL and owners Ryan and Ashley Smith pulled off in five and a half months – from acquisition to puck drop – was nothing short of incredible. Somehow, the NHL parachuted a problem into a burgeoning, young market that checks every hockey demographic box.

Utah sold 8,500 full-season ticket equivalents. On opening night, they doubled the single-day building record for merchandise sold – and there isn’t even a team name or logo yet. Fans chugged beers in notoriously buttoned-up Salt Lake City, setting a Delta Center record for most beer sold ($120,000) during an NBA or NHL game.

“I always believed the NHL belonged here,” Bettman said. “This just validates it.”

Utah is on track to be Top 20 in the NHL in both ticket sales and merchandise, president of hockey operations Chris Armstrong said. That is with 11,131 counted in attendance – the number of unobstructed view seats – not the 16,020 that entered the building and filled every seat.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Blackhawks captain Nick Foligno said. “To be honest, I heard great things, and it lived up to the hype. They were loud, they were energetic, and you could tell they’re happy to have hockey here.”

Less than six months ago, the Smiths stood in front of the Coyotes players and delivered the news: “You’ve been traded to Utah,” Ryan Smith said.

It’s been a whirlwind. They reimagined a temporary practice facility at the Utah Olympic Oval while construction is underway for a gleaming permanent practice palace in the suburb of Sandy, Utah. They had to reorient and adjust Delta Center to accommodate the basketball-first Delta Center.

But if you can look past the attention-seeking photos of the obstructed view seats, it’s easy to see it all come together. A $900 million overhaul of the arena is scheduled over the next three offseasons that will make Delta Center a world-class NHL arena with superb sightlines – and home of the 2034 Winter Olympic hockey tournament. Utah Hockey Club isn’t an NHL novelty; it’s the real deal.

“It’s not going to be perfect. We’re not going to get everything right, and we will make mistakes,” Ashley Smith said. “It’s going to take a while.”

Despite everyone’s best intentions, the Coyotes wandered in the desert for close to two decades, and it took until Tuesday for them to finally have their moment in the sun.

Gone are the distractions of playing in a 4,000-seat college arena, which was half filled with opposing fans on most nights. And the feeling of playing for a second-class, minor league franchise in the majors. And not having basic, NHL-caliber treatment, such as quality hotels on the road and proper nutrition looked after.

The bar was low. The former Coyotes, 17 of which were on the roster last season, walked into a sparkling new dressing room for the first time on Tuesday and they are grateful.

“This was on a whole ‘nother level,” Keller said. “It’s a completely different feel, I think it’s freed us up a little bit. We can focus on our job and it’s good to not have any distractions.”

That’s why Utah’s team motto this year is “All-In, No Excuses.” They can just play now. They are uniquely well-positioned for both now and the future, ready to compete for a playoff spot after years of disciplined building. Utah has the third-most cap space in the league, two bona fide top lines with young stars, a full complement of draft picks, and so many prospects in their system that the 50-contract limit will force them to be judicious with whom they sign. GM Bill Armstrong admitted that rival teams are already beginning to hunt players on their prospect list, knowing not all of them can stay.

“It’s a pretty good problem to have,” Armstrong said with a smile.

With the frantic sprint to opening night, Ryan Smith said he hoped he could take a second to sit back on Tuesday to realize: “This is a moment.”

It had to be a pinch-yourself moment for the cool, backwards hat-wearing billionaire. They pulled it off. He was sitting on a rinkside couch next to Bettman, with Dwayne Wade and Shaboozey nearby, and a slew of other Utah celebrities in their orbit. And they were watching NHL hockey, in temporary uniforms, with U-T-A-H across the front squaring off against the iconic, Original Six Blackhawks.

If you looked around, it was perfectly imperfect, in this makeshift arena setup. Fans without any emotional connection to these players might not have known whom exactly to cheer for outside of Liam “Spicy Tuna” O’Brien. They were still learning the cadence of the goal song, and grasping the flow of the game.

But hearing that organic “U-Tah!” chant and seeing the joy of converts experiencing the best live sport on the planet for the first time, well, that felt like watching love at first sight.

“It’s been a hell of a journey,” coach Andre Tourigny said. “One day, we’ll look back – we were part of it.”

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POST SPONSORED BY bet365

Love at first sight in Utah Hockey Club’s inaugural NHL game

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