The road to this historic game was anything but the seamless and smooth of which Armstrong spoke.
On April 18, Utah became an NHL team, replacing the Arizona Coyotes. Six days later, the players were greeted enthusiastically by a capacity crowd at the Delta Center in their first appearance in the city.
It’s been 19 long weeks since.
For context, it hasn’t even been a full year since the Arizona Coyotes made a different piece of history, playing the Los Angeles Kings in Australia in the first NHL regular-season game played in the Southern Hemisphere. The second of the two Global Series games in Melbourne was Sept. 24, 2023.
Since, the team played out its final season as the Coyotes, missing the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the 11th time in the past 12 seasons, and then relocated.
Utah has taken part in the 2024 NHL Draft, made a huge trade to obtain defenseman Mikhail Sergachev from the Tampa Bay Lightning, prepared a temporary practice facility, hired a broadcast crew and addressed countless other details, with many more still to be tackled.
It plays its regular-season opener on Oct. 8, a nationally televised home game against the Chicago Blackhawks.
NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly told NHL.com this week that it was the most impressive offseason ever undertaken by an NHL team.
But, they had yet to play a game.
Scratch that off the to-do list.
“This is what all the work has been about,” said Armstrong.
In the end, it didn’t matter that Utah lost the game on a third-period power-play goal.
“You know, you’re standing on the bench and you’re seeing the guys collectively go at it, wearing our colors, that was an interesting part of it,” said Steve Potvin, who ran the bench Friday and coaches Tucson, Utah’s affiliate in the American Hockey League. “That was nice to get started, and good effort by our guys.”
Armstrong and other members of the front office were on hand for the game, as was one of the Salt Lake City television stations, which flew in for the day to document history in the making.
The players understood the stakes and the sense of history as they waited for the puck to drop.
“It’s a new franchise, everyone was happy to wear the new jersey,” Lamoureux said. “We had a lot of energy during the game. It was pretty physical. We were intense. We were skating pretty fast. I just feel like everyone was just happy to put a new change in the first game.”
Owen Allard, a fifth-round pick in the historic first draft by Utah in June, scored to give Utah a 2-1 lead 4:39 into the third period.
Peter Repcik had scored the first goal in Utah history at 4:50 of the second period to make it 1-1.
Allard knew it was going to be a special game even before his big moment.
“It’s kind of a surreal feeling,” he said. “I mean, being lucky enough to put those colors on and represent a new team and a new franchise, it’s really cool.
“To be able to do it with other teammates and guys that you haven’t played with before and kind of build a bond with lots of great people, so, yeah, it was a really cool feeling and something I’ll remember for a while.”
So will everyone else involved in Utah’s first game.
