Who are — or will be — Utah Hockey Club’s biggest rivals?

Rivalries make sports more fun.
Some of my fondest hockey memories came as a young Vancouver Canucks fan in the late 2000s and early 2010s, watching my team battle it out in the playoffs every year with the Chicago Blackhawks. As much as the two teams dreaded the thought of facing each other, it made every game a must-watch event.
It also led to the greatest goal in Canucks history.
In my conversations about the Utah Hockey Club over the last few months, I’ve often been asked who its biggest rivals will be. It’s a hard question to answer because some rivalries only become that through several passionate, hard-fought games — but other rivalries simply come about because of things like proximity and divisional alignment.
So, as we approach the quarter mark of the season, here are some teams that could end up developing major rivalries with Utah HC.
Many long-time hockey fans in Utah have always cheered for the Colorado Avalanche because they were, for many years, the closest NHL team to Salt Lake City. For that reason, both times the Avalanche have come to Utah this year (once in the regular season and once in the preseason), the fan apparel in the stands was probably about a 50/50 split between the two teams.
There were even some people wearing, for example, an Avalanche jersey and a Utah HC hat. That’s the boat my wife is in, as she grew up in Colorado but lives in Salt Lake City now. It creates a dilemma: Do you cheer for the team you’ve always supported or the team in your city?
Being in the same division also creates a certain level of rivalry. The NHL playoff format is designed in such a way that a minimum of half of the matchups in the first round are teams in the same division.
Neither team is in one of those spots at the moment, but both project to be good for a long time, so there’s the possibility that they see each other in the playoffs more than once or twice in coming years.
Since the Golden Knights entered the league in 2017, they have been the closest team to Salt Lake City. Their early success won over many neutral fans, many of whom were in Utah.
Similar to the games against the Avalanche, when the Golden Knights were in town last week there were tons of gold jerseys in the stands. Chants of “go Knights go” would spontaneously erupt throughout the game and the building was loud when either team would score.
Additionally, fans across the NHL have taken to disliking the Golden Knights for a variety of reasons — chief among them being their captain’s tendency to get injured at the trade deadline every year, allowing them to use his cap space to add star players, and then return for the first game of the playoffs when there is no salary cap.
They haven’t technically done anything against the rules — it’s more of a loophole — but that doesn’t stop fans from losing their minds about it.
The Golden Knights have also been criticized heavily for their lack of loyalty toward core players. The worst was when they traded reigning Vezina Trophy winner Marc-André Fleury for a bag of pucks to open up cap space, and didn’t tell him about the trade until he found out on Twitter.
They also moved players like Max Pacioretty, Reilly Smith and Nate Schmidt at relatively low prices to make room for the big-name free agents of the respective years.
If Utah HC fans were to take a disliking of the Golden Knights, they would have the support of most other fans.
Going back to divisional rivalries, the St. Louis Blues are a strong candidate. The two teams are neck-and-neck in the standings right now, so if one makes the playoffs it will likely be at the expense of the other.
In their only head-to-head game of the regular season, a late Dylan Guenther goal gave Utah HC the edge in an otherwise close game. In the preseason, however, an own goal led to perhaps the most savage social media post we’ll see from a team account this year.
Additionally, Utah HC has plenty of former Blues, including general manager Bill Armstrong. If there’s any team the players especially love to beat, it’s their former teams.
Realistically, any two teams — especially if they’re in the same division — can become rivals. It doesn’t always take a hard-fought playoff series.
That’s what the Winnipeg Jets and the Minnesota Wild learned last year. They had a few particularly nasty games, and before you knew it, it was must-watch hockey whenever the two would play each other.
With that in mind, it’s highly possible that any team in the Central Division — or even the Western Conference — could become rivals with Utah.