The early results for the Utah Hockey Club are positive… So the NHL should have pulled the Coyotes soon

Thanksgiving is a good place to measure how teams perform during an NHL season since it’s just over a quarter of the way through the season, and while we typically judge play on the ice, this is a good time to to take a look at the Utah Hockey Club to see how things are going out of the ice cream.

Utah is in its first season after selling the hockey assets of the now-inactive Arizona Coyotes to Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith to create a new franchise that became the Utah Hockey Club.

Of course, we all still think of the Utah Hockey Club as the zombified remnants of the Yotes, even if the league doesn’t quite see it that way.

But what are the initial results from the team’s first few months in Salt Lake City?

Well, according to an article published by Sportsnet in Canada, it’s pretty darn good.

“It was something bad in the NHL, and Gary came in — with Ryan and Ashley Smith and their group — and turned it into something great,” Utah GM Bill Armstrong said.

“It was amazing to watch the transformation of what they did,” Armstrong continued. “It’s such a good thing for the NHL to bring NHL hockey to a place where people are just crazy about it.”

“That the players see that? What was promised has come true? It was amazing.”

Just a few months into their inaugural season, it is already clear that moving the Arizona Coyotes to Utah was a good decision. (Photo by Jamie Sabau/NHLI via Getty Images)

So why did the NHL wait until the Coyotes was wasting away in a college hockey barn (a very nice moment, but it’s still the case). Away too small for an NHL team) when things have turned around in just over half a year?

I have no idea because obviously the fans in Utah are already crazy about this team based on beer and jersey sales alone.

It’s no secret that NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman Really did everything he could to keep the team in Arizona. I mean, think about how many problems there were in the almost thirty years the team was in the desert.

And it’s not crazy to have done anything to get this team to work in the Phoenix area. That’s a big market and without the Coyotes, the NHL is now the only one of the four major North American leagues not represented there.

But let’s not pretend they couldn’t have pulled the trigger sooner and allowed things to get this bad in Arizona before exploring other options.

There are plenty of cities that would have been suitable options – Houston, Kansas City, Atlanta (uh, maybe; they had their chances), and Quebec City come to mind – but I think it was better late than never.