'The loudest building I've ever played in': Inside the memorable debut of the Utah Hockey Club

SALT LAKE CITY — "Let's go Utah!"

A singular voice screamed the familiar chant moments after the puck dropped Tuesday on the Utah Hockey Club's inaugural game.

"Let's go Utah!"

The chant slowly picked up steam, spreading from section to section of the Delta Center.

"Let's go Utah"

Soon, the organic call echoed through the entire area, masking the sounds of skates on ice and sticks on pucks.

"That was the loudest building I've ever played in," Logan Cooley said following Utah's 5-2 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks. "It was special."

The NHL arrived in Utah with an array of pomp and circumstance. ESPN did a live broadcast from outside the arena — for about 10 hours; there was a free concert in the plaza — by the artist with the No. 1 song in America; and players strolled down a blue carpet surrounded by hundreds — maybe thousands — of fans to enter the arena.

Oh, and there was the game.

Towels waved, chants rang out, and fans forked out hundreds of dollars for the hope of a memorable night. It didn't take long for the Utah Hockey Club to deliver.

Dylan Guenther scored less than five minutes into the game with a masterful one-time blast, and Clayton Keller followed suit later in the first period. Just like that, thousands upon thousands of diehard fans were born. Salt Lake City had become a hockey town.

"It's been a hell of a journey. It's been fabulous every step," head coach Andre Tourigny said. "To hear the crowd to start the game, presentation of the players, when we score our first goal, and when the thing got a little bit scrappy, that was just phenomenal."

If Tourigny wanted a reminder of the magnitude of that game, all he had to do was check his phone. Half the league's coaches texted him Tuesday about the historic contest; that usually didn't happen.

"I didn't receive any text from the head coaches last year, you know what I mean?" he said. "And I didn't text any other head coach, as well, too. It's special."

When Guenther scored his second goal of the night with under a minute remaining in the game to seal Utah's first win, the crowd was sent into a frenzy. Towels waved, people hugged, and fans screamed in joy.

In the grand scheme of the season, it's just one game of 82, but everyone knows Tuesday night's will linger ... maybe forever.

"That building erupted, and we see the towels go," goalie Connor Ingram said. "I think that's why any of us got into the game of hockey — that moment right there, that noise. That's what gets you up every morning."

Yes, the game was the grand finale to a special day in Utah, but it also served as a great beginning.

The game was the start of a journey for a team that had been left to wander for so long. They stuck together through tumultuous years in Arizona, where they played in a college arena as they hoped to find a permanent home.

It was clear they had found one on Tuesday.

Tourigny isn't the reflective type. There will be a day — maybe years down the road, maybe sooner — that he will sit down and allow himself to think about all that transpired over the last six months and longer. He'll think of the pain of leaving Arizona and the joy of finding more secure footing in Utah.

But for now, there's a job to do. There's worrying about a long flight to New York on Wednesday and getting ready for a week-long road trip; and making sure moments like what happened on Tuesday aren't one-offs.

"It's where my brain is," he said. "I'm not looking back much other than, 'OK, what can we do better and stuff like that.' I'm not the kind of guy who will reflect that much and think about what happened in the last six months."

So what will he remember about Tuesday?

"We won," he said. "That's what I will remember."

Everyone else will, too.

Related topics