Sold-out crowd fuels Utah HC to valuable win over Ducks

For the first time ever, the Utah Hockey Club beat the Anaheim Ducks on Wednesday night.

It was a 3-2 final score with dozens of good things that can be said about Utah’s compete level and maturity.

The win puts Utah just two points out of a wildcard spot — closer than they’ve been in a long time — despite the fact that two of their closest competitors also tallied points on Wednesday. The playoffs are very much in the question.

Utah Hockey for dummies

For the eighth time this season, Dylan Guenther scored the game-winning goal.

Excluding shootouts, which don’t give game-winning goal credit, Utah has won 28 games. I’m notoriously bad at math, but my calculator tells me Guenther has scored more than 28% of the game-winners this season.

And he’s only 21 years old.

As glad as head coach André Tourigny was to see Guenther’s shot go in, that wasn’t even his favorite part of his game.

“I’m more happy about the shot he blocked when the game was on the line than his goal, in the sense that that’s a choice you make,” Tourigny said. “Scoring a goal is a pretty easy choice when you have the opportunity. But when you decide to put your body on the line and sacrifice yourself for the team and do that for your brothers, I think that’s huge.”

Guenther is six goals shy of the 30 milestone. It’s his first full NHL season and he’s already one of the most important players on the team. If he continues progressing like this, his future is bright.

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Utah Hockey for casual fans

That may have been the most entertaining 3-2 game in a long time. It doesn’t always take a 5-0 score for the crowd to leave feeling satisfied.

There were plenty of big hits, but no cheap shots. Utah managed 39 shots on net, including some grade-A chances. Nearly every seat in the building was full of passionate fans (even though the game didn’t start until nearly 8:30 p.m. on a Wednesday) and the rally towels made an unforgettable scene.

There was even an all-time shot block from Mikhail Sergachev.

Games like these have the potential to create lifelong hockey fans. That’s exactly what a new NHL market needs.

Utah Hockey for nerds

UHC has come a long way in the last three months.

The last time the two teams played, Dec. 22, Utah got out to a 4-1 lead. The game was all but secured, but then they got comfortable. The three-goal lead got cut to two, then one. With less than five minutes left, Brett Leason scored on the power play to send it to overtime.

Utah would lose in a shootout that day, sparking Tourigny’s “We didn’t do anything good” quote.

At that point in time, Utah struggled to play with leads. They’d let the play come to them without making many real attempts to sustain zone pressure. It often resulted in blown leads.

They’ve clearly learned from those setbacks — which they showed on Thursday.

Sure, they lost what was once a 2-0 lead, but it wasn’t because of an overarching flaw in their playing style. At no point was there a series of defensive lapses that led fans to lose hope.

“We’re getting a little bit better at those situations every game,” Guenther said. “I don’t think we played our best game today, but we found a way to win and we managed the puck pretty well at the end of the game.”

The top objective of re-building teams is to grow, and Utah HC is doing exactly that.

What’s next?

Utah now heads to Seattle for its game on Friday against the Kraken. While the Kraken are realistically out of the playoff picture, the points have never been more valuable for UHC.

In the only other head-to-head matchup between these teams, Seattle walked away with a decisive victory: 5-2. A lot has changed since then, so Utah hopes that things will play out in its favor this time around.

The game starts at 8 p.m. MDT and will be broadcast on Utah HC+ and Utah 16.