It’s hard to argue that it hasn’t been a successful first season of hockey in Salt Lake City. Despite a plethora of injuries, the Utah Hockey Club has been hanging around the playoff picture in the Western Conference all season long, and currently sit just four points back of the final postseason berth — with a game in hand on the St. Louis Blues.
Utah is above .500 at 31-27-11, and if a couple of those games that went past regulation had went another way, Andre Tourigny’s team could be in a playoff spot right now. Either way, there is a lot of hope around this young, skilled roster moving forward, and they should just continue to get better in 2025-26 and beyond.
But there is some concern in the short-term, as the chances of them advancing to the dance are not great with 13 games left in Utah’s regular-season. Here are a couple of key reasons why.
Utah is playing .500 hockey with nearly a fully healthy roster
Earlier in the campaign, Utah was forced to deal with a couple of brutal bounces. Two key defensemen in Sean Durzi and John Marino were forced to miss multiple months due to respective ailments, crippling the blue line.
General manager Bill Armstrong brought 30-year-old veteran Olli Maatta into the fold ahead of the deadline — which cost a 2025 third-round pick — to try to alleviate some of those problems, and he’s been decent if unspectacular with the team. As of March 22, the entire D-core is healthy, except Robert Bortuzzo, who didn’t move the needle too much regardless.
A blue line led by Mikhail Sergachev, and also featuring Marino, Durzi, Maataa, Ian Cole and Michael Kesselring is solid, and it’s a key reason the squad is still in the playoff race. With Connor Ingram in the NHL/NHL Player Assistance Program Karel Vejmelka has also stepped up between the pipes.
Up front, besides depth forward Liam O’Brien, the offensive unit is fully intact. It’s great that the Utah Hockey Club will be mostly healthy down the stretch, but it’s concerning that the team is struggling to string together wins at the most crucial juncture of the campaign.
Utah has lost five of nine games in the month of March, including a 7-1 shellacking at the hands of the Edmonton Oilers on March 18. Vejmelka has been more than solid between the pipes, but he’s started 12 straight games and it’s clear the fatigue is starting to catch up to the 28-year-old.
It doesn’t help that a couple of the teams in the playoff race are starting to heat up.
There are some surging teams in Western Conference wild card race
One of the hottest teams in the National over the last couple of weeks has been the St. Louis Blues. Jim Montgomery’s team has come out of nowhere, winning four games in a row and 11 of 14 dating back to February 8. The way things are going, it’s going to be tough for any of the other playoff-hopefuls to pass them if they keep playing the way they are.
Along with the Blues, the Minnesota Wild have reversed a short trend of futility and have won two games in a row — soon to be three, as they have a 3-0 lead on the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday afternoon. They’re soon to be 12 points up on Utah, and with so few games left, there is virtually no chance the Hockey Club will be able to pass the Wild in such a short time.
That means that there really is only one wildcard berth up for grabs, which the Blues, Vancouver Canucks, Calgary Flames and Utah are all battling for. And although neither the Canucks nor Flames have been particularly good lately, both teams are playing .500 hockey and are currently a couple of points ahead of Utah.
All that to say, it’s going to take a herculean effort for Tourigny’s group to win the amount of games they’ll need to to advance to the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs. They have 13 left, and realistically would have to win at least nine or 10 to still be playing hockey at the end of April.
What’s also concerning is the fact that the team has the opposite of an easy schedule the rest of the way.
Utah has a tough remaining schedule in 2024-25
The silver lining is that Utah has more home than road games; they’re set to play seven games at the Delta Center, and just six away from home. But the opponents on the other end of the rink won’t make things easy for them.
Down the stretch, they’ll play the lowly Nashville Predators twice, and the equally lowly Chicago Blackhawks once. Those three games are absolutely must wins. So is a home tilt against the Seattle Kraken on home ice on April 8.
In the NHL, there’s obviously no easy games. But Utah has to win all of those. And they’ll need to steal a couple against a few really good teams, including two games against the Tampa Bay Lightning in a span of six days — including on Saturday night at home. They’ll also play the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers once, the Western Conference-leading Winnipeg Jets once, and the Los Angeles Kings and Dallas Stars once each.
All in all, not an easy schedule by any stretch of the imagination. The team has played .500 hockey for all of March with a healthy roster, and in case there is significant improvement over the last three weeks, they’re going to be on the outside looking in come mid-April.
Regardless, it’s been a successful season. The Utah Hockey Club has an excellent young core that should only get better, a strong blue line led by a two-time champion in Sergachev, and an above-average goaltender in Vejmelka.
The future is bright, but the short-term outlook is concerning. It’s going to take a miracle to get in; let’s see if Utah can string together a couple of victories and make things interesting down the stretch.
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