Where the sport of hockey stands in Utah — and how it needs to grow

In the summer of 1995, after years of financial struggles, the Quebec Nordiques moved to Denver and became the Colorado Avalanche. The team’s relocation was much like the Arizona Coyotes’ move to Utah, aside from the little asterisk that technically marks the Utah Hockey Club as an “expansion” franchise.

Today, 29 years after they started calling Colorado home, the Avalanche are thriving. They won the Stanley Cup for the third time in 2022 and have their sights set on it again this year.

When Utah hockey fans look back on this season three decades from now, they’re hoping to celebrate that same kind of success. But a lot has to happen within the team — and across the state — for Utah HC to reach the same heights.

Early success can only help

Winning the Stanley Cup in your first season in a new state certainly doesn’t hurt fan engagement. That’s what the Avalanche did in 1995-96, and the Vegas Golden Knights came close to doing in 2017-18.

Before the move to Colorado, the Nordiques had spent the better part of a decade in a rebuild. That process accelerated when Eric Lindros, the first overall pick in 1991, demanded a trade while on the draft stage . It might seem like a bad idea to trade a future Hall of Famer, but it set the franchise up for many years of success.

The team landed Peter Forsberg and Mike Ricci in that trade, as well as a handful of assets that would be traded for more pieces of an eventual dynasty. After relocating, the Avalanche made the Conference Final five of the next six years, capturing a second championship in 2000-01.

Like the 1995-96 Avalanche, Utah HC has a young core of highly talented players . On the day Colorado won the Cup in 1996, Joe Sakic was 26, Clayton Keller’s current age; Adam Foote was 25, a year younger than Mikhail Sergachev is right now; and Peter Forsberg was 22, barely older than Dylan Guenther is.

It would take a miracle for Utah HC to win the Cup this year, but being good relatively quickly is imperative if the team wants to find success early — and hang on to it.

General manager Bill Armstrong believes Utah has the tools it needs.

“Out of all the teams, we might be in the best shape as an organization,” Armstrong said in September. “We don’t really have any bad contracts, we’ve got cap room to add, we’ve got a boatload of picks and a boatload of prospects that are knocking on the door to become NHL players.”

Armstrong’s studies of other teams’ rebuilds have led him to believe that it takes between five and eight years for a team to fully rebuild. This is year four of Armstrong’s reign as general manager, so he counts this as the fourth year of the rebuild.

“It was pretty shocking just to see how long it does take to become competitive after you strip it down and then make the playoffs and then go on to win a championship,” Armstrong said .

The state of hockey in Utah

To become a successful hockey state, Utah will need more than a good NHL team. It will need a strong system of lower hockey leagues, including at the youth level.

Utah currently has 60 high school hockey teams, 5,000 registered youth hockey players and 16 full-time sheets of ice. A total of five Utah-born players have made it to the NHL, combining for 1,942 regular-season games.

By contrast, Colorado has 15,000 registered youth hockey players. It has 307 high school hockey programs: 238 boys and 69 girls teams. There are 48 full-time ice rinks and the state has produced 19 NHL players, including current stars Jaccob Slavin and Troy Terry.

Salt Lake City is already home to an ECHL team, the Utah Grizzlies. The state doesn’t have any NCAA hockey programs, but it does have four schools with club teams that play in the ACHA, which is a league of club collegiate hockey teams.

There was a fifth ACHA program until 2021, when BYU pulled the plug on its team.

Utah teams have won the Turner Cup, awarded to the IHL champions, on three occasions: once in the Grizzlies’ inaugural season, 1996, and twice when the now-defunct Salt Lake Golden Eagles captured it in 1987 and 1988.

Colorado’s numbers in all these categories dwarf those of Utah after almost 30 years of NHL hockey in the state, which means Utah has a lot of room for growth.

Youth hockey in Utah

With sponsorship from Nomi Health, Utah HC is implementing a learn-to-play initiative called “Hockey 101.”

Similar to Colorado’s “Learn to Play” initiative , its purpose is to get kids interested in hockey from a young age.

Utah HC forward Logan Cooley is a beneficiary of a similar program put on by the Pittsburgh Penguins. A little more than a decade after participating, he joined Bill Armstrong and others on stage as the third-overall selection in the 2022 NHL draft.

Hockey 101 began with a free event at the Delta Center on Sept. 30, which involved interactive games, prizes and more for kids. Throughout the year, the team will host additional Hockey 101 events at rinks around the state.

Sean Durzi, a defenseman on the team, attended the event to meet the young fans and “be as welcoming as they’ve been to me.”

“The youth hockey program is so important. To think about what it’s done in my life, whether I made (the NHL) or not, I made so many friendships, so many good relationships, just kept me busy in my childhood, taught me so many life lessons that you can’t really emulate anywhere else.”

Utah HC defenseman Sean Durzi

“The youth hockey program is so important,” Durzi said. “To think about what it’s done in my life, whether I made (the NHL) or not, I made so many friendships, so many good relationships, just kept me busy in my childhood, taught me so many life lessons that you can’t really emulate anywhere else.”

Utah HC is also giving hockey equipment to local schools in order to integrate hockey into the PE curriculum.

Additionally, the team is donating 100 tickets to each game this season to nonprofits, schools, community groups and charitable organizations. Each of those tickets comes with a free hot dog and a soft drink.

“We are committed to leveraging the Utah Hockey Club platform to uplift the community here in Utah, and this program is just the beginning of that effort,” said Chris Armstrong, the team’s president of hockey operations.

Team owner Ryan Smith has told the media that he envisions a hockey program similar to the Junior Jazz , which teaches more than 60,000 kids the game of basketball.

What would it take for Utah to get D1 hockey?

Colorado is home to three NCAA Division I hockey programs, including the 2024 national champions, the Denver University Pioneers. Having elite college hockey is a necessary step if an NHL team wants to eventually draw on homegrown players.

All four of Utah’s hockey schools have ACHA Division II hockey, and the University of Utah also has a ACHA Division I program. The University of Utah is also the only school with a women’s hockey team.

“My ultimate goal is to make this a D1 program and have NCAA hockey in the state of Utah,” Morgan Feenie, head coach of the Utah men’s Division I team, told the Deseret News.

Feenie currently recruits the majority of his players from out of state, including internationally. He hopes for a day when Utah produces enough good, young hockey players for the team to mainly consist of local kids.

“If we grow the base and youth, we’ll have an opportunity to keep these players in the state of Utah, versus going elsewhere,” he said. “There’s no bigger dream and driver for a youth player than to play for their local NCAA team.”

Feenie hopes to work with the NHL to conduct an NCAA feasibility study, which would help determine whether the school could support an NCAA team. The NHL and the NHLPA typically fund these studies in an attempt to grow the game of hockey everywhere they can.

“Where high-level hockey is established, youth hockey interest and participation often follows,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in a 2017 press release . “By expanding the footprint of elite hockey at all levels, we can inspire new players and parents to join the hockey family. By working to add programs at the Division I level, we hope to grow the game of hockey, both on and off the ice.”

Penn State and ASU were the most recent teams to make the jump from the ACHA to the NCAA, doing so in 2013 and 2015, respectively.

The first factor for both teams to make the jump was funding. Terry Pegula, the owner of the Buffalo Sabres and a Penn State alumnus, donated $102 million to make it possible for his alma mater. ASU received $32 million from various private donors. These donations funded a number of things, including the renovation or construction of NCAA-suitable facilities.

NCAA Division I arena requirements include a minimum of 5,000 seats and exclusive right of refusal to use the facility throughout the entire hockey season. None of Utah’s schools have arenas that fit those demands, though several of them would just need seating upgrades to fit the bill.

Funding for college hockey also goes into travel expenses and equipment — all of which is paid for by players and team fundraising in the ACHA, as opposed to being team-funded in the NCAA. NCAA teams also provide scholarships, which ACHA teams don’t do.

What does the end game look like?

It’s hard to predict the future of hockey in Utah with any certainty. There are so many factors in play and the NHL is just getting started in the state.

But as the team attains success and the youth hockey scene grows, fans 30 years from now could enjoy the same type of success that the people of Colorado do today.

“We’re going to try to do a good job of continuing to grow the youth hockey here,” Durzi said.