Utah Hockey Club beats Colorado Avalanche by a ‘landslide’

What’s an avalanche to a yeti? The Utah Hockey Club beat the Colorado Avalanche 6-3 on Sunday night.
Utah looked shaky at the start, spending seemingly the entire first period in its own zone. But as the game went on, they found their footing and filled the net.
Utah improves to 3-1-0 in the preseason. Just remember that the preseason is very rarely a reflection of the regular season, as teams ice incomplete rosters.
Whether you’re invested in the team or not, you probably know at least two names: Spicy Tuna and Tij Iginla.
Iginla is perhaps best-known for the name on the back of his sweater. His father, Jarome Iginla, is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, primarily for his work with the Calgary Flames. But as the first player ever drafted by Utah HC, Tij Iginla is looking to make his own history.
Tij started making that history on Sunday, donning the Utah HC jersey for the first time. He missed the entire Rookie Faceoff and part of the preseason with a hip injury, but he’s ready to go now and he’s looking good.
The biggest positive to Iginla’s game so far is his strength. Despite the fact that he only turned 18 in August, he seems to be able to compete in the physical side of the game with the fully grown men.
Late in the first period, Iginla found the puck behind the Avalanche net. As an opponent threw a hit, Iginla threw one back, knocking him down and carrying on his way with the puck. That play is known as a “reverse hit,” and ironically, was most famously used by Avalanche legend Peter Forsberg.
In the second period, Iginla had a pair of offensive plays that may have made you think his dad was the one wearing number 12.
The first was a wraparound, which is a high-confidence play. The second was a playmaker’s play, drawing in an opponent in the offensive zone to give teammate Jack McBain more space. He fed McBain a pass, giving him an excellent scoring chance from in tight.
He did all that despite only playing 12 minutes on Sunday. If he can continue on his current trajectory, he just might become the 50-goal-scorer that the team envisioned when drafting him.
Utah HC management received criticism from some skeptics for committing to Dylan Guenther for eight years before he’d even played a full NHL season. It’s only the preseason, but Guenther gave fans a glimpse of why the organization was so confident in him.
Guenther scored points in all three periods, and all three came by the way of one-timers. The first two were his own goals, where he loaded up like Alex Ovechkin and blasted pucks past Justus Annunen. His third point was an assist as he set Clayton Keller up for a similar goal.
Again, it’s still the preseason. Would Guenther have had that type of success if Cale Makar and Devon Toews had been leading Colorado’s defense corps? Probably not — but it’s still a good sign.
Whether intentionally or not, Utah HC sat its two top penalty-killing forwards, Kevin Stenlund and Alex Kerfoot. Yes, it allowed the Avalanche to score two power play goals, but it also gave management an opportunity to see how the other forwards would fare in that role.
Nine different Utah HC forwards took turns on the penalty kill, including seven who played more than a minute short-handed. It seemed to be a tryout for roles on the second penalty killing unit.
This is where the Doan versus Yamamoto debate continues. Both guys got significant penalty killing time, and both did reasonably well. Yamamoto allowed one goal against in four and a half minutes of penalty killing, and Doan was perfect in his two and a half minutes. If Utah HC is weighing the pros and cons of keeping these guys around for the penalty kill, they probably can’t go wrong with either guy.
Utah HC heads to California for a pair of mid-week games. They play the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday and the Anaheim Ducks on Wednesday. Both games start at 8 p.m. MDT and will be streamed on Utah HC+.
Both the Ducks and the Sharks missed the playoffs by wide margins last season. While neither team is expected to be all that dangerous this year, both squads could be playoff-ready around the same time as Utah. That could lead to a nice rivalry a few years down the road.