Halfway through Season 1, here's my grade for the Utah Hockey Club

🎵CAN YOU MEET ME HALFWAY???🎵

So croons The Black Eyed Peas’ Fergie.

Answers the Utah Hockey Club in its inaugural season in the Beehive State, “Sure.”

Yes, I know that’s an insanely weird lede to start some kind of sportswriting thing. What I’m trying to articulate is that we’ve officially reached the halfway point of the Utah Hockey Club’s 2024-25 season.

Following a 2-1 win over the San Jose Sharks, the Clubbers stand at an 18-16-7 record with 43 points in the standings. That places the fellas in sixth place in the Central Division and three spots out of the second and final wildcard position in the playoff race.

These dates on the NHL calendar usually call for midseason report cards. Just about every sports media outlet and hockey publication does this kind of thing.

And SLC Puck!, a wanna-be sports media outlet, will do the same.

So how should we grade this season so far? Is it crass or unfair or petty to judge this team as anything less than stellar? Shouldn’t we just be glad that NHL hockey is in Utah and be satisfied with whatever we get?

Nah. F*ck that. I’m giving the fellas a B-.

I mean sure, I’m happy. Having this franchise in Salt Lake City has completely and utterly changed my life. And thanks to the prevalence of social media-induced parasocial relationships, I now consider all the members of the team my best friends.

But putting on my smart ass, loves to eat fast food in the car, ‘sportswriting is an art form, thank you very much’ hat, I cannot in good conscience give the Utah Hockey Club a perfect grade. I already give them so much of my money for merch and jerseys I’ll have to buy all over again when the team's brass finally announces the real name; what more could they ask for?

But a B- is a very respectable grade. As someone who graduated from a public university with a 2.8 GPA and a degree in communications, I’d say that’s a damn fine grade. It’s good, but not great. I think that’s something those of us who have watched every single second of this team play could say with honesty.

There have been some peaks and valleys, for sure. The first regular season game, a 5-2 win over the Chicago Blackhawks definitely started things on the right note. I don’t think I’ll ever think of the date October 8th the same ever again. Overtime wins over the Boston Bruins, New York Rangers and Montreal Canadiens, three of the game’s blue-blood programs, so to speak, also have a place in my mind and heart as highlights of the season.

Enlisting the Disco Cowboy to motivate a slumping Lawson Crouse to step his game up was a good idea on my part.

The fact that it worked was even sweeter.

The lows, however, have been frustrating. Losing 11 of 15 at the end of October and into November was rough. That included a truly inexcusable overtime loss to the San Jose Sharks on Oct. 28. That game, as you may unfortunately remember, slipped away after the Clubs gave away a 4-1 lead in the third period. Utah blew another 4-1 edge over the Ducks on Dec. 22 to lose by a similar score, 5-4, again in overtime.

Two eerily similar losses to two bad teams from California? It’s annoying enough that these California a**holes keep coming into our quiet, mid-sized state to ruin our housing market. Drives me nuts — and I love Orange County and Disneyland as much as the next LDS-raised dork from Davis County.

It’s moments like that, along with some of the aggravations we’ve seen on a nightly basis for most of the year — the bad shooting, the unwillingness to adopt a true ‘shoot-first, ask questions later’ mentality, the bad penalties, the lack of toughness/physicality, and my god, the fact that some of the best merch sells out at the team store almost instantly, that precludes me from giving this team an A.

But hey, what do I know? I’m just a maniac who podcasts from his mom’s basement.