The Dallas Stars will visit a new city to play hockey games this upcoming season. They will travel to Salt Lake City to take on the Utah Hockey Club. It will be interesting to see what their home crowd will be like in their first season in the NHL. The Utah Hockey Club has made improvements to their team throughout this offseason. They won't be the team the Stars played in Mullett Arena last season.
Ever since Ryan Smith bought the Arizona Coyotes last season, there has been excitement in Salt Lake City. Beginning in the fall, the Utah Jazz won't be the only tenants in the Delta Center. Before single-game tickets went on sale, they received 34,000 deposits for season tickets. 92% of those ticket deposits aren't season ticket holders for the Utah Jazz. Players like Clayton Keller and Liam O'Brien will bring the hockey crowds to the arena.
This isn't the first dance with ice hockey for the state of Utah. The first hockey team to ever play in Utah was the Salt Lake Golden Eagles. They called Salt Lake home from 1969 to 1994. They were considered a triple-A hockey club, equivalent to the ECHL level today. They have an ECHL team currently playing in Utah called the Grizzlies, and they have been there for the past 18 seasons.
The one thing the Stars must realize when traveling to Salt Lake City is that they will be entering a more "hockey-heavy" environment than Mullett Arena was. Now, give credit to the Arizona Coyotes; they did what they could to keep the franchise in Arizona. However, Smith will revitalize the franchise in Utah. It just stinks that we won't know the team name until 2025. The Stars can expect the crowd to be loud in the Delta Center when they take the ice for warmups and the game.
Hockey fans should be excited that Utah is finally getting an NHL hockey club after all the years of minor league hockey. Their excitement and energy could throw some teams off their game, like the Stars in their first game in the Delta Center. I'm sure teams across the league will prepare for their first road game. It will be a completely different environment than the Mullett Center was last season. It will be a fun storyline to watch when the 2024-25 season begins in a few months.