'Intensity,' 'emotion' evident in Utah Hockey Club's loss in rivalry game

SALT LAKE CITY — Ask any long-time hockey fan, and they'll tell you that rivalries are forged in the playoffs.

But ask a few members of the Utah Hockey Club and they'll call the team's budding relationship with the Colorado Avalanche a rivalry already, even after just three regular-season matchups.

"Yeah, it is," said Utah head coach André Tourigny when asked after the game if his squad's brief history with Colorado constitutes a rivalry. "There's intensity, there's emotion on both sides."

The game ended with a 4-1 Colorado victory, which clinched a 2-1 matchup series win in the three scheduled games this season. Even with a deficit in the win total against the Avalanche, Tourigny was pleased with how his team played against its proclaimed nemesis this season.

"We did pretty good this year against them if you look at the quality of the team they have this year," Tourigny said, adding that Colorado is a team with legitimate Stanley Cup aspirations.

Utah forward Nick Schmaltz, who scored the Hockey Club's lone goal of the evening, also dropped the term.

"Colorado is one of our closest teams, so it's a fun rivalry game," he said. "It sucks we weren't able to get the win."

Friday's narrative was building even before the puck dropped. Over 14,000 rally towels reading "Let's Go Utah" greeted the capacity crowd to an elevated game atmosphere.

A straw poll among the media sitting on press row determined that the sound system had been cranked up a notch or two. The sounds from those in attendance had been ratcheted up a bit, too, it seemed.

After all, it was a hot ticket. At puck drop, SeatGeek showed a "get in" price of $133 for the cheapest available ticket — Section 131, Row 9, Seat 7.

For everyone who didn't make it to Delta Center on Friday night, they joined a national television audience on ESPN2. The Hockey Club's social media team even went so far as to call the end-of-week tilt a "Rocky Mountain rivalry" on social media platform X.

The stage was set. Was it a coincidence that a literal avalanche warning was declared just hours before the game?

As Tourigny noted afterward, the emotion was palpable on both sides of the ice and in the arena, which drew plenty of fans in Colorado sweaters.

Just one example came late in the second period when Colorado superstar Nathan Mackinnon dropped the gloves against Utah's Barrett Hayton. The donnybrook was Mackinnon's first since 2022, and just the 10th scrap he's had in 828 career games. The dust-up was also Hayton's first ever in 244 appearances.

Trailing 1-0 at the time of the kerfuffle, Utah tied the game up on Schmaltz's goal 3:42 into the third, but three unanswered scores by Colorado, including two empty-netters, put the game out of reach.

Reflecting on the loss, emotion and energy were present in Tourigny's remarks.

"We get emotional really quickly in the game. With the frustration, it's easier to get under our skin," he said. "We would love to be at the level of energy of our fans all the time. I think the effort is there, the love is there, we just need to find a way to stay just a little more composed."

Rivalry games do tend to stir up a lot of emotion. But did Friday's night game find the unofficial technical definition of such?

Again, your longtime hockey-loving buddy would probably say no, not until the teams face off in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

But after closing the book on its first year of regular season matches with the Avalanche, the Utah Hockey Club would say it is. Call it a rivalry.

_Austin Facer is a contributor to KSL.com's hockey coverage. He also hosts SLC Puck!, a twice-weekly podcast on Utah's hockey scene. You can subscribe to SLC Puck's YouTube channel here. In addition, Facer co-hosts the NashCast, the Utah Hockey Club's alt-cast starring NHL funnyman Tyson Nash, available exclusively on SEG+ or Utah HC+._

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