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The Utah Hockey Club salutes the fans after defeating the Los Angeles Kings in overtime in a preseason game on September 23, 2024 at Delta Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images)

Utah HC Has Lived Up to Inaugural Season Expectations

Originally posted on The Hockey Writers
By Jeremy Schouppe | Last updated Apr 10, 2025 9:35 AM ET

Approximately three-quarters of the way through the NHL season, I wrote a piece detailing how the Utah Hockey Club was living up to or exceeding expectations in its inaugural season. With Utah being eliminated from the playoff picture for over a week, I want to reiterate this point: Utah had an excellent inaugural season, living up to expectations, and the future is exceptionally bright in Salt Lake City.

What Were Utah HC’s Preseason Expectations?

Before the 2024-25 NHL season kicked off, ESPN ranked Utah 22nd in its “way too early” power rankings, and Power Rankings Guru‘s Model projected Utah to finish with 87.9 points.

With four games remaining, Utah has a 36-30-12 record and 84 points. They are still projecting 87.9 points for the season, which is right in line with their preseason projection, and currently sit 19th in the NHL.

While these are both great things to see, the best way to gauge if a team is surpassing expectations is to look at the goals they have set for themselves. Before Utah’s inaugural NHL season, general manager Bill Armstrong was very candid and realistic about goals for his team, saying, “Not many teams make the playoffs in the fourth year coming out of the rebuild, but I would say we’re hoping to play meaningful games. I think our team is going to be highly competitive.”

Did Utah HC Live Up to Preseason Expectations?

Throw away any differing models, power rankings, or analyst opinions. If you look solely at the expectations this team set for themselves, they more than met them, and they have to be happy with their first season in Salt Lake City.

At the NHL’s March 7 trade deadline, Utah was just two spots out of a wild card playoff spot in the Western Conference. Since then, they have played numerous big “meaningful” games, some of which Utah won and others of which they lost.

Although Utah is not mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, their chances of making it have been less than one percent for over a week now (via Money Puck). While the meaning of Utah’s last couple of games has gone down, Utah, the fourth-youngest roster in the NHL this season, got almost a month of meaningful, playoff-type hockey games. Experience that will be invaluable as this team continues to develop in future seasons.

Utah’s season also becomes much more impressive when you consider the injuries this team had to deal with. It started with Nick Bjugstad and John Marino, who both missed the start of the season. Bjugstad missed approximately the first month of the season, and Marino missed more than half of the season after entering training camp with a week-to-week designation. Then Sean Durzi, another one of Utah’s right-handed defensemen who was pencilled to play on one of Utah’s top pairings, missed more than 50 games after falling injured in their third game of the season.

Then there was Connor Ingram, who struggled mightily at the start of the season before missing time to mourn the death of his mother, who lost her life to breast cancer. Ingram then returned two months later and made nine starts before entering the NHL’s Player Assistance Program to get the help and care he needed after going through the highly traumatic experience of losing his mother.

Utah battled through many forced lineup changes throughout the season, and looking back on their injuries, incredibly, they stayed in the playoff conversation as long as they did. The one knock on Utah this season would be their consistency.

After starting the season on a three-game win streak, Utah lost six of its next seven games and 12 of the next 16. After this run, they won nine of their next 13 games before dropping another 10 in a 12-game stretch. In addition, they had another stretch immediately following this when they won three straight, but followed that stretch by losing five more in a row.

Much of this can be attributed to the players coming in and out of the lineup with injuries and the general lack of experience due to the age of this roster. Regardless, their inconsistency ultimately kept them out of the playoffs. However, on the bright side, Utah has been much more consistent since the beginning of February and has had the 11th-best point percentage in the NHL since Feb. 4.

It may feel like Utah left plenty of points on the table and missed a chance to add pieces at the trade deadline to help make a playoff push. They had a fantastic first season in Salt Lake City, exceeding expectations considering all the injuries this team had to battle. This season was a great building block for a developing team that will look to take a couple of big swings this offseason to become even more competitive in 2025-26.