SALT LAKE CITY – Buzz. Nerves. Tension. Fit checks. The urge to impress. The kind of energy that only a long-awaited, curious introduction can deliver.

Watching the Utah Hockey Club’s first game on Tuesday night through the lens of thousands attending their first NHL game was a bit like witnessing a first blind date from a bar.

Utah, meet your hockey club – and the NHL.

Hockey club, meet your new home.

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

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

Everyone may have been holding their breath as Captain Clayton Keller revealed that the Finnish-born Markkanen had fallen on the ice during a morning rehearsal, but Markkanen took advantage of the moment and slid around with ease. The Delta Center crowd roared and Keller slid in for the showdown.

And Dylan Guenther scored twice to lead Utah to its first 5-2 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks.

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

The beauty of this romance, having inherited the fragile heart of a defeated Arizona Coyotes franchise, is that it seems destined to be forever.

“It feels like we’re meeting at the perfect time,” Ashley Smith, co-owner of the Utah Hockey Club, said Tuesday.

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

What the NHL and owners Ryan and Ashley Smith accomplished in five and a half months – from acquisition to puck drop – was nothing short of incredible. Somehow, the NHL has dropped a problem into a fast-growing, young market that checks every hockey demographic.

Utah sold 8,500 season ticket equivalents. On opening night, they doubled the single-day construction record for merchandise sold – and there’s not even a team name or logo yet. Fans drank beer in the infamous 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 confirms it.”

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

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Blackhawks captain Nick Foligno said. “Honestly, I heard great things and it lived up to the hype. They were loud, they were energetic and you could tell they were 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 was a whirlwind. They’ve reimagined a temporary practice facility at the Utah Olympic Oval while construction continues on a gleaming permanent practice palace in the suburb of Sandy, Utah. They had to reorient and adapt Delta Center to accommodate the basketball-first Delta Center.

But if you can look past the attention-seeking photos of the seats with obstructed views, it’s easy to see that it all comes together. A $900 million renovation of the arena is planned over the next three seasons, which will make Delta Center a world-class NHL arena with excellent sightlines – and home to the 2034 Olympic hockey tournament. Utah Hockey Club is not a novelty in the NHL; it’s the real deal.

“It won’t be perfect. We won’t do everything right, and we will make mistakes,” Ashley Smith said. “It will take a while.”

Despite everyone’s best intentions, the Coyotes wandered the desert for nearly two decades, and it wasn’t until Tuesday that they finally had their moment in the sun.

Gone are the distractions of playing in a 4,000-seat college arena that was half-filled with opponents on most nights. And the feeling of playing for a second-tier minor league franchise in the majors. And without basic NHL-caliber treatment, like quality hotels along the way and good nutrition.

The bar was low. The former Coyotes, of whom there were seventeen on the roster last season, walked into a sparkling new locker room for the first time on Tuesday and are grateful.

“This was on a whole different level,” Keller said. “It’s a completely different feeling, I think it has freed us a bit. We can concentrate on our work and it is good not to have distractions.”

That’s why Utah’s team motto this year is “All-In, No Excuses.” They can just play now. They are unique and well positioned for both now and the future, ready to challenge for a play-off spot after years of disciplined building. Utah has the third-highest cap space in the league, two bona fide top lines of young stars, a full slate of draft picks and so many prospects in their system that the 50-contract limit will force them to be judicious about who they choose to work with. sign. General Manager Bill Armstrong admitted that rival teams are already starting to hunt for 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 moment Tuesday to sit back and realize, “This is a moment.”

It had to be a pinch-me moment for the cool, retarded hat-wearing billionaire. They took it off. He sat on the bench next to Bettman at the rink, with Dwayne Wade and Shaboozey nearby, and a slew of other Utah celebrities in their orbit. And they watched NHL hockey, in temporary uniforms, with UTAH up front facing the iconic, Original Six Blackhawks.

Looking around, this makeshift arena setup was completely imperfect. Fans without any emotional connection to these players may not have known who exactly to cheer for, other than Liam “Spicy Tuna” O’Brien. They were still learning the cadence of the goal song and understanding the flow of the game.

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

“It was a great journey,” said coach Andre Tourigny. “One day we will look back – we were part of it.”

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POST SPONSORED BY bet365

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