Utah HC Living Up to Expectation in Inaugural Season

The Utah Hockey Club has played 56 of its 82 scheduled games in their inaugural season in Salt Lake City. With the 4 Nations Face-Off Break nearly behind us and almost three-quarters of the 2024-25 NHL season behind us, it feels like a great time to check how Utah’s young roster is stacking up to preseason expectations.

What Were Utah’s Preseason Expectations?

Anticipation for Utah’s inaugural season built quickly after the Arizona Coyotes’ relocation to Salt Lake City was announced. Many media members and analysts jumped at the opportunity to give their opinions on what to expect, and since the Coyotes spent the last four seasons rebuilding their roster entirely, these predictions of how Utah would perform in their first season varied widely.

However, what people outside of the organization thought does not matter. The only expectations that matter are the ones management and players set for themselves.

Before the season season, general manager Bill Armstrong went on TSN’s Overdrive show and said, “I think we’re taking a step forward. We’re starting to come out of the rebuild. We had some key pieces added at the draft with [John] Marino and [Mikhail] Sergachev and free agency day with [Ian] Cole and [Kevin] Stenlund,” but wanted to temper expectations, adding “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.”

Is Utah Meeting Expectations at the 4 Nations Face-Off Break?

Utah’s first 56 games have been nothing short of a violent roller coaster ride. It started with then winning three-straight games to open the season. Then, Utah failed to win back-to-back games for nearly two months before going into a stretch where they won six of seven games. Again, after this hot streak that ran through most of December, Utah went ice cold, losing 10 of their next 12 games before winning three-straight again, which was followed by another five-game losing streak which they snapped against the Philadelphia Flyers. Utah won three of their last four games before the 4 Nations break.

This has all led us to Utah’s current position: a 24-23-9 record and 57 points. While they have been virtually eliminated from a Central Division playoff spot, Utah only sits six points out of the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference with 26 games remaining.

While being six points out of a playoff spot may not seem like a lot, MoneyPuck‘s model only gives Utah a 15.8% chance of making the playoffs. Even though this makes it seem like Utah is a long shot to make the playoffs, being six points out of the playoffs makes Utah’s remaining games more than meaningful and they are on pace to be precisely where Armstrong expected them to be.